AI Disclosures

My Philosophy with AI

I have worked in the Tech industry for over 15 years now. AI has taken over Tech, specifically Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. AI has existed in Tech in many different forms for many, many years before LLMs became mainstream, but moving forward on this page when I say AI I mean LLMs and Generative AI unless otherwise noted. I resisted using AI in my professional life for several years, but it is no longer feasible to work in Tech and not use AI on a daily basis. Some of that has bled into other areas of my life, including The Rush Guide Co.

I firmly believe the large language models should be used as an intern or a Rubber Duck. They should not govern your strategy. They should not be the ones generating ideas. They can be used where it makes sense to save time on repeatable tasks, but not for your entire brain/job. They can be the one helping edit and refine, as well as doing tasks that you would give an intern like researching. AI does frequently make mistakes. A human should always be in the loop.

I could rant for 10 more paragraphs, but we’ll move on…

How I Use AI

1. My brand

I did all the design work for my brand: logo, color palette, font pairings, brand voice, etc. by myself without the use of AI. Canva’s background removal tool is AI based (non-LLM), I do not believe I used it for my logos with transparent backgrounds, but if I did they will show up as AI generated.

2. The Guides, Blog Posts & Other Long Form Writing

For every single one of the guides I started by creating a 3-5 page outline of what I wanted to cover. I used an LLM (Claude) to review the outlines and poke holes in things I might be missing. Mostly because I have been on the chapter side of recruitment for too long, and I forget that sometimes things that are obvious to me, are not obvious to people who don’t sit on hours of recruitment meetings a week. (If you’re reading this and would like to be my human version of this, DM me. We can chat!) I manually added all of my content to any ideas Claude thought I was missing. Claude did help me with some phrasing, headings and transitions. Claude did not contribute any of the core information to the guides, and frankly the stuff it suggested I add was very frequently wrong.

The same is true of my blog posts, product pages, and any other long form writing. I’ve always been better at speaking than writing - I’ve given talks in front of hundreds of people at a time. In my writing I like to diatribe, and I’m much better at math than grammar. So LLMs have helped me normalize my writing and speaking styles so they match a little better. I did not use an LLM while writing this piece. Hence the diatribing and grammar errors. (At least I’m self aware!)

3. Website

As someone who got into tech by teaching herself how to code when I was in middle school, it pains me to say that Claude codes almost everything on my website. This has become the standard in the tech industry. Things that would take me 8+ hours to do, takes Claude 5 minutes or less. If you ask engineers in Silicon Valley how much code they are writing by hand on a daily basis it’s 5% or less.

Design wise, I researched designs, thought about what design elements I would need for my brand, and found bits and bobs of design libraries that I liked. Then I created my own brand design library. Very standard operating procedure for web design from ye olden days. From that library Claude and I built the website and any subsequent pages, including this one. This is the industry standard for creation of bespoke websites now.

My product images are AI generated with “photoshop”ed elements (the guide covers, blurring, etc.) on top. I tried using stock photography with the guide covers overlaid, and they looked more AI than actual AI generated photos. And in the user studies I did with multiple people, everyone also agreed. What a world we live in. 🙃 Example below.

4. Social Media Content Creation

My videos will be labeled as AI generated media because I use Canva’s AI captioning tool to add my voiceover captions to my videos. To my knowledge, there are no captioning tools on the market that are not AI including the built in ones in TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.

I write all of my voiceover scripts from my own ideas. Claude will sometimes help when I’m stuck on how to explain a complex idea, or to gut check if I left out enough details about the real people that my storytimes are about.

My carousels on Instagram and TikTok are designed in Canva with real design elements.

All of my imagery is real video footage of my hands, etc. All stock photos are either taken by me or downloaded from paid stock photography libraries, or creative commons licensed photos. This is also why I don’t use chapter images in my social media, they have not signed off on me using their likeness, so I will not.

All voiceovers are my voice, recorded and sound mixed, by me. All background music is real royalty free music that I am allowed to use as creative commons or other licensing.

Things I Will Never Use AI For

1. Anything with PII (Personally Identifying Information) and Sensitive Data as defined by privacy laws like GDPR and CPRA

If you send me a resume, etc. AI did not review it, nor will it ever. Data privacy laws exist and everyone should be more aware of them. Also, I actually enjoy doing this part of my job, and I don’t think an LLM would do a good job anyway. Remember: intern, not an expert.

2. Generating specific recruitment advice

They’re all terrible at this, and frequently wrong. I would spend more time correcting the info than just writing it myself.

I’m sure there’s other things in this “no” pile, but those are the first ones that came into my brain. I’ll likely add to this list over time.

Ask me questions if you have any. I always endeavor to be as transparent as possible, and that’s a large part why this brand exists: transparency in recruitment.