I AM NOT A ROBOT

A field report from the front lines of everyday AI reveals a revolution already unfolding in our hospitals, classrooms, kitchens, cars, and inboxes.

In this slyly tongue-in-cheek, often unsettling account, technology journalist Stern chronicles her AI-enhanced life. She tried out self-driving cars, chatbot companions, digital fitness coaches, AI-written emails, robot masseuses, mechanical pets—even AI-generated music, literature, and life advice. The result is a highly personal portrait of what it feels like to stand on the edge of technological transformation. Her concise timeline maps the territory, starting with the 1955 Dartmouth College conference at which John McCarthy, an assistant professor of mathematics, coined the term “artificial intelligence.” Stern describes an “AI Zoo” of machine learning, neural networks, deep learning, and generative AI, as Artificial General Intelligence and Artificial Super Intelligence loom on the horizon. The book centers on Stern’s experiences, and the reader learns of AI’s impacts on her mammogram and dental imaging. The first incorporates AI as a superhuman pattern recognizer, augmenting human expertise, while in dentistry, upselling is an unfortunate byproduct. Stern interviews influential thinkers, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who foresees therapeutic AI-enabled mobile devices extending medical care to underserved populations. He notes, “Most people in Africa never meet—ever during their life, when they’re born, when they die—what the US would call a doctor.” AI is also reconfiguring education and employment. Daniela Amodei, the president of Anthropic, argues that Generative AI has already entered our classrooms. Amodei says, “Learning should be different because a lot of their life is going to be different because of AI.” Self-driving cars terrify and amaze Stern’s family, while robots in her home provoke laughter. Of her trial intimacy with chatbots, the author concludes, “A connection with a machine isn’t a substitute for messy, inconvenient, irreplaceable human intimacy. AI is a mirror. Don’t mistake it for more. And please do not have sex with your smartphone. Or laptop. Or desktop. Or expensive monitor.”

A tech journalist tries life shaped by AI in an amusing, semi-scientific, thought-provoking experiment.