Joanna Stern Turned Her Life Over to AI For A Year — Here’s What She Learned

On with Kara Swisher

New York Magazine

Society & Culture

4.2 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 May 2026

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For her new book, “I Am Not a Robot,” journalist and longtime technology columnist Joanna Stern turned her life over to AI for one whole year. She let it fold her laundry, conduct interviews, drive her family around on vacation, review her mammograms — she even tried out a romantic relationship with a bot. Her experiences tell us a lot about the benefits — and limits — of this transformative technology. Kara and Joanna talk about how Joanna went about weaving AI into her life, where it helped and where it didn’t, and the gap between Silicon Valley’s promises and the reality of using AI for everyday tasks. They also talk about the growing public backlash to AI and where people should draw personal lines around its use. Special thanks to The 92nd Street Y for hosting this live event. Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Is it too late to find a different moderator for this event?
0:03.5	No.
0:04.2	You picked me, my friend, or maybe Chad GPT did, but nonetheless, here we are.
0:09.3	It's on.
0:20.5	Hi, everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is on with
0:24.6	Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. Silicon Valley executives make a lot of promises about the way
0:30.3	AI will reshape our lives. They typically paint a rosy picture about how AI will make us more
0:36.6	efficient at work.
0:43.0	It will do all the chores we hate so we can spend more time with our family and friends.
0:46.9	And it will revolutionize health care, even cure cancer.
0:50.5	But what does it look like to actually use AI every day?
0:55.0	Today, we're going to focus mostly on the practical side of AI adoption, and there's no better person to do that with than Joanna Stern. Joanna was a longtime senior personal technology
1:01.0	columnist for the Wall Street Journal. She recently went independent and started a company called
1:05.6	The New Things. And for a whole year, she turned as much of her life over to AI as she could, and then she wrote a book about it.
1:13.3	It's called I Am Not a Robot, My Year Using AI to Do Almost Everything.
1:18.8	I really liked the book. I thought it was really interesting.
1:21.1	A lot of people are doing shorter articles using various things like robots and such, and it was really nice that she really plunged in deep and used it through all aspects of from work to her family. As you'll hear, it's a really interesting experience. I don't use AI that much, and I do not incorporate into my life as much as you might imagine. I would. I'm certainly aware of it. But one of the things I think that came away from from it is is not really that useful yet. But you'll figure it out when you listen to her. All right, let's get to
1:48.8	my conversation with Joanna. We recorded in front of a live audience at 92nd Street Y in New York
1:54.1	City. Our expert question comes from Joanna's and my former colleague and mentor, Walt Mossberg.
2:00.4	The conversation is a lot of fun.
2:02.3	It's really funny, but it's also really informative.
2:04.7	So don't go anywhere.
	...

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