How to think clearly in the age of AI, anti-intellectualism, and doomscrolling with Shae Omonijo
Working Hard with Grace Beverley
sophie@grace-beverley.com
4.2 • 901 Ratings
🗓️ 9 February 2026
⏱️ 82 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We can’t avoid the AI conversation, and honestly, pretending it’s not happening is the worst possible strategy. So instead of speculating or panicking, I want to have a really open, frank chat about what it’s doing to our brains, and how we can control it.
So I started looking for an expert who was actually thinking seriously about this space, not in a hypey way or a doom way, but in a thoughtful, academic way. Then I came across one of Shae O Omonijo's videos, and immediately knew she was exactly the person to have this conversation with.
If you want to actually learn about AI without fear mongering, how it’s fuelling anti intellectualism, and what we can all individually do about it to use it in a more thoughtful way, stick with me, because Shae is doing a Harvard PHD on exactly that! I hope you love this conversation as much as I did.
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SHAE OMONIJO
IG: https://www.instagram.com/iamshaeo/?hl=en
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@iamshaeo
Substack: https://shaeomonijo.substack.com/
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | What is up? I'm Grace Beverly and welcome back to Working Hard. |
| 0:14.6 | The podcast-shaped guide book on how to improve your own life and achieve what you actually dreamed of doing. |
| 0:18.8 | Because life's too short for boring podcasts and bad advice. |
| 0:25.3 | What is up and welcome back to working hard? I want to talk about this for a while. When we talk |
| 0:29.7 | about this, it has to be a nuanced conversation. But I feel like online, for the past six months |
| 0:35.9 | or so, talking about AI full stop has been a no-go because it is |
| 0:41.3 | terrible for the environment. And that is something that we cannot avoid at the moment. It is the |
| 0:46.0 | reality. But at the same time, we cannot avoid the conversation entirely. And honestly, |
| 0:53.0 | pretending this AI takeover is not happening is going to be a difficult |
| 0:58.7 | strategy for ourselves, for our careers, and for policy around AI, for what we can actually |
| 1:06.2 | do to make it more environmentally friendly, for what we can do to create a future that, yes, still has |
| 1:14.2 | AI, because realistically I think that's the future that we're all looking at. But that |
| 1:19.6 | is a better one and one that is more cognizant of people and planet and jobs, etc., etc. So instead of speculating or pure |
| 1:30.9 | panicking, I've wanted to have a really open, frank chat about all of these bad points of AI and also |
| 1:36.7 | the reality of what that's actually doing to us and our brains and our careers and therefore |
| 1:43.9 | how we can control it. So I started looking |
| 1:45.9 | for an expert who was actually thinking seriously about this space, not in like a hypey way or a |
| 1:51.6 | doom way, but in a thoughtful academic way. And I came across one of Shea's videos and I immediately |
| 1:59.2 | knew she was exactly the person that I wanted to have |
| 2:02.2 | this conversation with. If you want to learn about AI without fearmongering, how it's fueling |
| 2:08.1 | anti-intellectualism and what we can individually do about it to use it in a more thoughtful way, |
| 2:13.3 | stick with me because Shea is doing a Harvard PhD on exactly that. Before we get into it, please make sure you're following this podcast on whatever app you're listening to this on. |
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