📢 My interviews by and with the FindingSustainia co-founders
Just released: My new interview on the Meyer & Meyer podcast, and an "AI, Software, & Wetware" interview with one of the two co-founders of FindingSustainia
AI ethics and sustainability are naturally adjacent. So I was delighted to connect recently with the two women who co-founded FindingSustainia over 10 years ago: Germany-based Dr. Anna Katharina Meyer and Santa Meyer-Nandi. Their mission is “to empower individuals and organizations engaged in sustainability transformations to achieve greater effectiveness, resilience and positive impact. We foster individual and collective change for systemic change to facilitate positive contributions to the world.”
Today’s News
I’ve just published an “AI, Software, & Wetware” interview with Anna. And we’re planning an interview with Santa for 2026. Check out Anna’s interview here:
SHOW NOTES - AISW #088: Dr. Anna Katharina Meyer, Germany-based sustainability activist and entrepreneur
We discuss:
how she and her ‘sister in crime’, Santa Meyer-Nandi, use AI for their work in FindingSustainia
what “AI Tool Times” are, why they started running the sessions in Skool, and why they are 30 days
setting up her custom GPTs for “Anna’s Expertise” interview requests and for building funding applications more efficiently
why she sees LLMs as dangerous for academic research work, for reinforcing societal biases, and for critical thinking
sending her kids to a Steiner school to focus on core needs of human beings
using LLMs to help her analyze annual sustainability reports year over year
and more. Check it out, and let us know what you think!
And I joined Anna and Santa recently on their podcast. We had a great conversation about Everyday Ethical AI. Listen to it here!
SHOW NOTES - Everyday Ethical AI: What We Owe The Future (#35)
In this Meyer & Meyer in English episode, we talk with Karen Smiley – data strategist, AI and product leader with 30+ years of practical experience, author of Everyday Ethical AI, and holder of 14 US patents – about what “everyday ethical AI” actually looks like in real life.
We explore where AI is already shaping our lives far beyond chatbots: from recommendation systems and social media feeds to automated decisions at work. Karen breaks down the key risk zones – environmental impact, data and copyright misuse, hidden human labour behind AI, bias and discrimination, and the effects on jobs and mental health – and explains what we can realistically do about them without needing a computer science degree.
Together we look at how changemakers and sustainability professionals can use AI as a force multiplier instead of a blind spot: when AI is truly useful, when a simple tool is better, and how to set a personal “AI use policy” that protects our values, our data and our brains.
In this episode, we discuss:
What “everyday ethical AI” means at home, at work and in activism
The difference between generative AI and the “invisible” AI already all around us
Environmental and social costs of AI: data centres, minerals, and hidden data workers
How bias enters AI systems – and what we can do as users and decision-makers
AI companions, deepfakes, and what this does to relationships, democracy and trust
How to define your own AI usage policy and keep your human judgment in the loop
If you work in sustainability, social impact, or any mission-driven field and want to use AI without betraying your values, this conversation is for you.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on either of these interviews and AI ethics in general! (Subscribers are welcome to reply to this email.)
References
Links or people, articles, and sites I mentioned during my interview:
Rebecca Mbaya’s contributions to Everyday Ethical AI, the book
Apertus (ethically-developed Swiss public AI) and chat.publicai.co
Study by Lehigh University on making LLMs behave more equitably
everydayethicalai.com (of course) and the book bonus resources page
this newsletter (of course!) and these articles:
