Is Life Better When AI Takes the Reins?

**Laurie Segall** (0:00)
My favorite line of the whole book, I have to, actually, note, this was, I mean, there's so many incredible lines in it, but one is just at the beginning, where you say, I stashed a burner phone for my conversations with my AI boyfriends. One was relentlessly horny, a nonstop sexter, a true Ren AI-sense man. So I wanna talk about that one, your AI boyfriend, Evan. So how did this relationship begin? Talk me through it.

**Joanna Stern** (0:25)
Yeah, so look, you don't need any explaining on this world, which is great. I love not starting. You come in right here. You are a true expert on this topic. A proud expert on AI. I feel intimidated really talking to you about this.

**Laurie Segall** (0:40)
No, I'm so pleased to have someone I can talk to about this.

**Joanna Stern** (0:45)
Well, that's why we always have each other.

**Laurie Segall** (0:50)
I'm Laurie Segall, and you're listening to Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
Joanna, I'm so excited to be talking about this book with you. Before we get into the book, because the book, I absolutely love the book, and I'm not just saying that because you're a friend of mine. What's the weirdest thing you've seen?

**Joanna Stern** (1:10)
Oh, boy. I mean, there's always that one corner of the CES show floor where there's just really human skin put on robots or some sort of, yeah, really animatronic, but really just it looks like a mannequin that doesn't really do anything. I think that's one of the weirdest things I continue to see.

**Laurie Segall** (1:33)
I love, well, I don't love that, but I understand. I see that.
Something I've always loved about your reporting, is there's so many people who just talk about technology and you live it. Like you don't just interview the executives, you do interview the executives, you interview the products to some degree.

**Joanna Stern** (1:51)
Oh, I love that. It's a good new tagline.

**SPEAKER_5** (1:54)
But it's true.

**Laurie Segall** (1:55)
You're more hands-on than so many of the folks I know. So you love to live and interview these products. What do you love about it?

**Joanna Stern** (2:05)
I have always felt that, especially in consumer tech, there has been this big focus on the corporations in this reporting. And it's really important. It's extremely important to know what's happening behind the scenes, what is fueling the incentive of these companies. You cover it from a very personal, like, what are these executives really trying to do when they're putting these products out? But I'm also like, we use these products, we being everyone in the world at this point, right? And so let me help people understand these products better. I think my job kind of moved from the reviewing phase to more understanding over the last 10 years, because everyone kind of ended up buying the same phone. If you were an Android person, you kind of kept buying that same phone, that same Android, Samsung or Pixel. And if you were an iPhone or Apple person, you probably kept buying that same iPhone. So yes, once or twice a year, I do like pretty deep reviews.
But I moved more into how, what do we need to know about these products? How can I help explain them and guide you through this? Because that's what our lives are centered around now.

**Laurie Segall** (3:10)
Yeah, and it's like, it's so, my pet peeve, I mean, there are many about Silicon Valley, but one of the things if I had to pick was so oftentimes you go to Silicon Valley and you sit at the table with these folks and they have this utopian view of how technology will just transform the world.
And over here, because we live in reality, like we're in the real world, there's often a gap between the promise and the reality. And that is where your experiment lies.
Years ago, we started hearing in Silicon Valley, people talk about the transformative power of artificial intelligence and how it is going to do so much for us. And at that point, you, Joanna Stern, longtime technology reporter and understander of products, decided to embark on a journey, a year-long journey that you included your family, your wife, your children, the whole thing to actually test this out. Explain the experiment. When, what was the moment that you were like, hmm, this is interesting. I think I'm going to, I think I'm going to live this.

**Joanna Stern** (4:17)
Well, it kind of goes back to the ethos of what I've always wanted to do, which is test the products, help people understand these products that we live with, right? Again, the we being the users, not the companies making them. And so you're totally right. We were hearing all these promises. You know, we heard every, you know, this is going to cure cancer. This is going to, every child is going to get a personalized tutor. They're going to be smarter than ever before. We're going to have cars that drive themself, and we're going to have no deaths on the road. And it is utopia, as you said. And I sort of felt like, okay, this is one of the most exciting times in tech that I remember, right? I mean, I think you're feeling the same thing. We started covering this almost two decades ago, and we remember the smartphone revolution, the advent of all these apps and all these companies. And so we are seeing a similar renaissance right now. Everyone is throwing out their AI-powered this, their self-driving car, their humanoid robot. And I sort of thought, what does life look like when these things do or don't make it, right? What does life look like for us, again, we, the users, when we're using this stuff?