Inside a journalist’s year of using AI for (almost) everything
5/12/202646 min
Tech writer Joanna Stern used AI to read medical results, respond to texts and serve as her therapist. She says her emotional connection to it was unsettling. Her new book is ‘I Am Not a Robot.’ She spoke with Terry Gross.
Also, TV critic David Bianculli reviews the new PBS special marking David Attenborough’s 100th birthday.
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
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Sam Briger· Host0:23
This is Fresh Air. I'm Sam Briger. 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.
Terry Gross· Host0:36
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 in 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