This is fresh air. I'm Sam Brigger. Terry's getting over the remnants of a cold and resting her voice, which you'll hear in this interview, is a little hoarse.

Here's the interview she recorded last week that was scheduled for today.

My guest is the author of the new book, I Am Not a Robot. But she kind of turned herself into a robot for an experiment.

Joanna Stern spent 12 years as a tech reporter for the Wall Street

Journal and is now chief technology analyst for NBC News. Throughout most of 2025, she engaged in an

experiment to test the capabilities of AI and see what AI could do better than humans and what humans

could do better than AI in terms of speed, accuracy, efficiency, clarity, cost, and judgment calls.

She asked AI to take care of everything in her life that it was capable of doing.

She had AI gadgets attached to nearly every part of her body and around her home.

She relied on AI to transport her and driverless

cars, where they were available, read her mammogram and ultrasound, fold her t-shirts, read and

respond to email and texts, talk to her erotically, function as her robot dog, help her write her new book,

and more. Her 2021 documentary, E.Ternal,

won an Emmy for outstanding science, technology, or environmental coverage. During her 12 years at the

Wall Street Journal, she was known for her personal tech column and her sometimes hilarious videos

testing new digital and AI devices. She's started a new

tech journalism company called The New Things. Joanna Stern, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you so much

for having me here. Be wearing any gadgets right now? I am wearing some gadgets, but not as many

gadgets as I wore last year. Yeah, the experiment is over, so what do you have on now? I am wearing some gadgets, but not as many gadgets as I wore last year. Yeah, the experiment is

over, so what do you have on now? I have my Apple Watch, and then actually in my bag here, I have my

recording bracelet that I wore throughout the year, which is a AI recording bracelet. It transcribes

everything that it hears, and it's basically a little surveillance device that always is transcribing and recording what I say. And what you say. Do you get pitched by advertisers based on what conversations AI has overheard? No, no, no, no. Despite the fact that everyone in the world thinks our phones are listening to us, this is not actually resulted in a lot more advertising based on everything I've said in my life.

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