Episode 111: One Woman’s Rebellion Against Reckless AI

In this thought-provoking episode of Tech Transforms, host Carolyn Ford welcomes Janet Kang, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur turned nonprofit leader whose work sits at the intersection of AI innovation, ethics, and long-term societal impact. After building companies since age 13, launching multiple ed-tech ventures, and incubating AI-powered products in a corporate venture studio, Janet experienced firsthand the exhilarating speed and unsettling risks of deploying AI in real-world environments. Those experiences ultimately led her to join Just Horizons Alliance, a nonprofit committed to developing open protocols, ethical frameworks, and real-time auditing tools that help organizations build and deploy AI responsibly. Janet shares candid stories from the early days of AI adoption, where models behaved inconsistently, guardrails lagged behind product timelines, and the pressure to scale fast often overshadowed deeper questions of safety and accountability. She explains why today’s biggest risk isn’t far-off superintelligence; it's the immediate, under-regulated integration of AI into education, healthcare, hiring systems, and public services. For younger users especially, she warns, AI already shapes communication, decision-making, confidence, and even identity and most tech leaders lack the tools to properly assess or mitigate those risks. Carolyn and Janet explore why ethical AI requires more than thought leadership and policy statements. It requires action: adversarial testing, real-world simulations, contextual frameworks, and independent audits that account for messy human behavior, not just ideal use cases. They also discuss the structural barriers women face in tech, the mentors who “give up their seat” to make space, and the mindset shift that comes with parenthood thinking in decades, not quarters. Looking ahead, Janet envisions a future where AI becomes “infrastructure, not the main character” as invisible and reliable as flipping a light switch because circuit breakers, safety layers, and accountability systems are finally in place. Until then, she calls on builders, executives, educators, and policymakers to take practical steps now: test relentlessly, understand failure modes, prioritize vulnerable users, and choose impact over speed. This is an episode for leaders who want to innovate boldly and responsibly, those wrestling with how to balance progress with protection, and how to shape an AI-powered future worthy of the next generation. Show Notes: www.justhorizons.org https://www.linkedin.com/in/kangjanet/ Pause superintelligence petition - https://www.axios.com/2025/10/22/superintelligence-ai-pause-yoshua-bengio Books Mentioned Empire of AI — Karen Hao The Alignment Problem — Brian Christian The Broken Earth Trilogy — N.K. Jemisin (recommended by Carolyn)