It started with a book club I never made.

Last summer I designed it in excruciating detail — the reading schedule, the prompts, the whole vibe. I felt amazing doing it. And then I never launched it. In this episode I'm using that story as the entry point into something I've been quietly figuring out for a couple of years: my personal bar for when using generative AI is actually worth it.

This isn't a pro-AI episode or an anti-AI episode. It's an honest account of how I went from delighted early adopter, to someone who noticed she was outsourcing her own discernment, to someone who has built what I'm calling a sovereignty muscle — a choosy threshold for when I open the tab and when I don't.

I talk about the dopamine feedback loop that keeps us coming back to these tools even when the follow-through isn't there, the ethics reckoning I had as a reader and lover of human-made art, the environmental cost I started taking seriously, and why I eventually moved from ChatGPT to Claude.

And then I get practical. The 70/30 rule — the tool brings the structure, you bring the discernment — and what that actually looks like whether you're a healthcare leader, a creative, or someone who just really wants to read more but can never seem to make it happen.

No matter where you find yourself — quietly guilty about using AI, scared to start, or just exhausted by the noise — this episode is for you. You don't need the right opinion about AI. You need your own.

Topics covered: generative AI, discernment, the outsourcing trap, the cheating feeling, environmental cost of AI queries, the Anthropic values pivot, the 70/30 rule, and the sovereignty muscle.

Connect with Erin:

• Instagram: @medium.lady
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• Email: mediumladytalks@gmail.com
• Explore more book-related content on "Medium Lady Reads." - link to Spotify
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