meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Marketplace Tech

What AI can and can't do for you (for now)

Marketplace Tech

Marketplace

News, Technology

4.51.3K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2026

⏱️ 7 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Imagine if you invited robots - smart ones or “smart-ish,” at least - into every aspect of your life. Your emails and texts are all composed by an AI, the bots look at a photo of what’s in your fridge and figure out what you can make for dinner. They even become emotional support, providing advice and sometimes companionship. Journalist and founder of media company New Things, Joanna Stern, decided to try this and she wrote about it in her new book “I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI To Do Almost Everything.” Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Stern about how AI did and didn’t help her and ultimately what she sacrificed by inviting AI into her life.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

What it means when AI is your housekeeper, your therapist, your everything.

0:06.9

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

0:09.8

I'm Stephanie Hughes.

0:20.5

Imagine if you invited robots, smart ones, or smartish, at least, into every aspect of your life.

0:27.9

Your emails and text are all composed by an AI. The bots look at a photo of what's in your fridge and figure out what you can make for dinner.

0:35.4

They even become emotional support, providing advice,

0:38.7

sometimes companionship. Joanna Stern decided to try this, and she wrote about it in her new book,

0:44.7

I am not a robot, my year using AI to do almost everything. I asked her what was one thing

0:51.5

that became a lot easier when she let AI help.

0:55.3

Write the book. To be clear, and you know, because you've read it, that I didn't use AI to

1:00.5

write the book. I hired a lot of humans in the process of writing this book. I had a human fact

1:05.2

checker, a human illustrator, who, Jason Snyder, who did amazing work on the cover and with all the

1:10.2

small illustrations

1:10.9

throughout the book. But AI helped in some key ways that truly, I do not think I would

1:17.0

be here on this show right now. I would still be writing this book or working on this book

1:20.6

without AI tools. So research was a big one. Research was getting so much better through

1:25.5

2025 that I could task it with looking at big chapters

1:29.8

and topics like health care, how it was impacting work and lots of academic papers. And I could have it

1:35.4

go look at these academic papers, make sense of it, pick out people I should go and interview. And so

1:40.5

the job that I once was giving to a reporting assistant, I was giving to AI. But it's very much my

1:47.6

voice. It's very much my personality. I do not think AI could have done it as well. I didn't really try.

1:54.3

It wasn't appealing to me. It was like, if I'm going to do this, I need to do this.

...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 4 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Marketplace, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Marketplace and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.