Joanna Stern spent a year testing the AI future. Here’s what she learned.

View our Twitter (X) feedView our Youtube channelView our Instagram feedView our Substack feedView our Spotify feed Joanna Stern spent a year testing the AI future. Tech journalist Joanna Stern spent a year using as many AI products as she could. It changed more than her workflow.

In the introduction to her new book, _I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything_, Joanna Stern describes a typical day in what could conceivably be all of our futures. Autonomous robots mow your lawn, fold your laundry, and drive you to your favorite restaurant. Algorithms monitor your vitals, write bedtime stories for your children, and whisper personalized positive affirmations as you fall asleep.

One reason Stern decided to write this book was to discover just how revolutionary the AI revolution was shaping up to be. If for profit, well, we already know the answer to both of those questions. _I Am Not a Robot_ also glimpses into how the daily usage of various AI products will change not just the world, but ourselves. Like smartphones and social media, AI tools are destined to evolve from novelty into ubiquity, always at our fingertips and increasingly difficult to live without, whether we like it or not.

Fresh off finishing her book — and, acting on the advice from one of her chatbots, quitting her longtime job as a senior tech columnist at _The_ _Wall Street Journal_ — Stern spoke with Big Think to reflect on which (if any) aspects of the AI boom are worth the hype and whether the person who went into this self-experiment is different from the one who came out the other side. As the daughter of a multiple-time breast cancer survivor, who has a scary 39% chance of developing the disease herself, Stern was curious to learn how AI-powered applications like Koios DS and Transpara were being used in her yearly screenings. What she saw did not disappoint.

Trained on millions of mammograms, these applications can identify “patterns at the pixel level,” as Koios CEO Chad McClennan put it. These are patterns the human eye might overlook, especially if a doctor is coming down with the flu or distracted by drama at home. Citing research published in the _Journal of the National Cancer Institute_, Stern writes that early detection through AI tools could reduce certain cancer risks by up to a third.

She was less enthusiastic after visiting the dentist, where AI-powered dental tools are being used to detect the early signs of cavities and more. Unlike Koios and Transpara, though, these tools actually made her feel less at ease, not more. Dentistry is not as regulated as cancer treatment, she explains, and many dentists told her they felt pressured by their employers to use AI to over-diagnose.