Former WSJ Reporter Joanna Stern handed her life to AI for 365 days

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
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**Joanna Stern** (0:27)
If I go to a city where there's Waymos, I'm 100 percent taking Waymos over Uber or Lyft. I tested and talked to a lot of robot companies and they're just so far away. Even if you don't use AI, it's still going to invade your life. They're going to use AI to read your X-rays, and then they're probably going to tell you, you need more treatment than you actually need, because the AI is telling them that. I think that the Vision Pro was a great piece of technology. I just thought Apple would make it not feel like you're wearing a face computer. My review was 24 hours wearing that thing. Even after an hour, I am miserable. So I was wrong at saying this is something that more people will have, because clearly nobody has them.

**Neal Fryman** (1:09)
Good morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neal Fryman.

**Toby Howell** (1:13)
I'm Toby Howell.

**Neal Fryman** (1:13)
Today, a special holiday episode about letting tech control your life.

**Toby Howell** (1:17)
We're joined by famous tech reviewer and AI convert, Joanna Stern. It's Friday, June 19th. Let's ride.

**Neal Fryman** (1:29)
Good morning. It's Juneteenth, and we've got a fantastic interview to bring your way.
What if you let AI take over your life for one year? Joanna Stern did. The legendary tech columnist spent a year letting AI into nearly every corner of her life, from parenting her kids to buckling up in the back of self-driving cars and then wrote a book about it. Joanna joined us to talk about what AI did well, where it fell short, and why humanoid robots are so dang funny.

**Toby Howell** (1:54)
Thank goodness Joanna did this experiment because letting AI infiltrate every aspect of my life, no thank you. We also talked about not AI stuff too, like how she knows if a tech product is going to be a hit or a flop, what piece of tech she intentionally downgraded, going from a better to a worse version. It is a great interview, we hope you enjoy it, and now a word from our sponsor, ServiceNow.

**Neal Fryman** (2:19)
Toby, you look a little rough, everything okay?

**Toby Howell** (2:22)
No, the AI was supposed to handle the parts of work I hate, but it just describes the problems back to me. Now I have a bunch of homework.

**Neal Fryman** (2:29)
That's why ServiceNow's AI specialists are different. They aren't a tool, think of them as digital teammates who can actually do the work. They can resolve cases, process requests, close loops without generating extra work for you.

**Toby Howell** (2:40)
When you can truly delegate to AI, you can get back to the work only you can do, the work that requires a person with ideas and judgment and you know, a pulse.

**Neal Fryman** (2:50)
To put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com, let's head to our interview with Joanna Stern.

**Toby Howell** (2:58)
Joanna, thanks so much for joining us.

**Joanna Stern** (3:00)
Thank you for having me here.

**Toby Howell** (3:01)
All right. Let's dive right in. For your book, you used AI in almost every part of your life for an entire year. Let's start here. What about AI impressed you? What was it really good at that surprised you?

**Joanna Stern** (3:13)
I've been talking a lot about my coverage and just over the year about AI at work. And so I think table stakes, everyone knows that AI is changing work and is making us more efficient. I'm sure you guys spend a lot of time talking to Claude and ChatGPT and Gemini and insert Chatbot of the moment and hottest of the season here.
So that, clearly, right? That was a big part of the year. I would say another really big category that I think is really one of the lasting ones for me was healthcare. And there's been a lot going on right now and a lot being said about, can we trust these bots for what they diagnose when we ask them, you know, I've got a rash. It's a good example, right?

**Neal Fryman** (3:56)
Help.

**Joanna Stern** (3:57)
I've got a rash in a place I don't want to say publicly.