At Inquiring Minds, we’re working toward a future where people thrive and come alive in their work and throughout their lives. AI helps us give more of our time to the human work that fulfills that mission. This page explains how we use AI and how we don’t. It applies to Irene, our team, and anyone working on our behalf.
Our defining principle
All work starts and ends with a human.
A person decides what the work is for. A person reviews it, owns it, and stands behind everything you receive. AI can help in the middle. And one more guiding principle: if it’s related to human connection or our zone of genius, it stays human. Coaching. Listening for what’s underneath. Designing the experience. Holding space. Asking the question that opens something up. That’s human work, and it always will be.
Where AI helps
- Behind the scenes. Scheduling, reminders, research, first drafts of proposals, and slides and handouts built from Irene’s designs.
- With your 360 and assessments. Irene conducts every interview and draws the themes herself. AI helps her run statistical analyses, check for anything she missed, and assemble a first draft of your report. Irene reviews, edits, and owns every word you receive.
- With scheduling and everyday questions. Our AI assistant helps sort our inboxes and writes from our admin email address. It can confirm or move a meeting within Irene’s calendar, point you to resources like workshop registration or the CoLab member page, and answer the routine questions an administrative assistant would: where to find a document, what your proposal included, when your contract ends. It always tells you it’s an AI assistant. Anything beyond logistics goes to a person.
- With our writing. Irene writes her books and essays herself. Blog posts, talks, and newsletters are written by Irene, then organized and edited with AI’s help. Social posts, announcements, and marketing are drafted with AI from Irene’s real stories and ideas, then edited and approved by her.
- With accuracy. AI gives us a first pass at fact-checking and can pull sources we might have overlooked. Then Irene puts on her PhD hat to check every scientific claim we teach or publish against primary sources. No neuroscience theater. No pop-science fluff.
- With photos and video. We use editing tools, including AI, for the kind of retouching a photographer would do: adjusting lighting and color, reducing glare on glasses, replacing or tidying a background, and removing distractions like a sign on the wall.
Where AI doesn’t
- AI never coaches you, and never makes judgments about your wellbeing or mental health.
- Your information never goes into free or personal AI tools. We use secure business accounts that don’t train on your data, including the tools that help us manage email, and your confidential coaching material is seen only by Irene and her secure tools.
- We never record a session without your consent.
- We never add or remove people, change what anyone is doing, or alter the main subject of a photo or video so it shows something other than what happened. We never use AI to generate an image or video of an event that didn’t happen, and we never present an AI-written story as Irene’s lived experience.
When we’ll tell you
- We’ll tell you when a story, case, or exercise in a workshop was written by AI, when AI is interacting with you directly, and when an image or video is AI-generated.
- If you ever wonder about anything else, just ask. We’ll answer honestly.
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