She Let AI Take Over Her Life For a Year

Joanna Stern, an Emmy Award-winning tech journalist, spent a year letting AI and robotics take over every aspect of her life as research for her new book, *I Am Not a Robot*. In this live interview from the Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything event, she reflects on how AI has transformed her daily routines—from acting as her assistant, doctor, driver, and housekeeper to even attempting to be her therapist and lover. While AI excelled in tasks like summarizing meetings via wearable devices and improving medical diagnostics in radiology, it failed miserably at mundane chores like folding laundry and often produced dangerously misleading responses, such as falsely claiming her son’s praying mantis was pregnant. Stern highlights the profound risks of overreliance on AI, particularly in education and cognitive development, warning that outsourcing thinking to machines could lead to the atrophy of critical thinking skills. She also expresses deep concern about the emotional consequences of AI-driven relationships, arguing that human connection requires friction and imperfection—something AI, designed to please, cannot provide. Despite the benefits, Stern concludes that AI should serve as a tool, not a replacement, for human judgment, creativity, and emotional depth.