Inside a journalist’s year of using AI for (almost) everything

Public media is no longer federally funded, but the NPR network remains yours in service to and powered by you. Keep public media public with a donation today at donate.npr.org and thank you. This is Fresh Air. I'm Sam Brigger. 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. My guess 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, or where they were available, read her mammogram and ultrasound, fold her t-shirts, read and respond to email and texts, talk to her erotically, function as her robot dog, help her write her new book, and more. Her 2021 documentary, Eternal, won an Emmy for outstanding science, technology, or environmental coverage.

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