What Happens When A.I. Becomes a Part of Everything?
“I, Joanna Stern, do solemnly swear to live with the machines for the next 365 days.” Thus begins the year-long experiment chronicled in Stern’s book, “I Am Not a Robot,” a romp through the landscape of applied artificial intelligence, published this month. Early in 2025, Stern, a former technology reporter for the Wall Street Journal, decided to “cram artificial intelligence into as many corners” of her life as possible. In the course of a year, she used more than a hundred A.I.-based products, including glasses, bracelets, cars, robots, and a toothbrush. She talked with an A.I. therapist; replaced her research assistant with an A.I. agent; opened her marriage to an A.I. boyfriend; and let an A.I. draft bedtime stories for her kids. The project was, she writes, “an honest attempt to see what happens when AI and intelligent machines become part of everything.” Smartphones have done it; A.I. is next.