AI should – Joanna Stern, an Emmy-winning tech journalist, spent a year using AI and robots to handle nearly everything she could—at work, for health, for parenting, and for daily life. In her new book, I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything, she lay
For a year. Joanna Stern let AI “take over nearly every part” of her life—without losing her mind. her marriage. or her job. She used it at work. She used it for her health. She used it for parenting. And she did it with enough curiosity to turn the experience into a book: I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything.
Stern’s premise is simple. and it comes with a clear warning: AI should support human thinking and creativity. not replace them. She argues that as AI becomes more integrated into daily life. people have to actively protect the experiences. relationships. judgment. and critical thinking that make them human.
Her five lessons are less a set of futuristic predictions than a checklist written from lived trade-offs—what helps, what erodes, and what quietly changes the way you think.
Work with AI, not for it
Stern’s first rule lands like a confession. She says the moment you outsource the hard work—the thinking work—AI stops being “working for you” and starts turning into something you’re working for.
She describes seeing that dynamic in a very specific setting: when she returned to her college to observe classes, she saw how many students used AI to summarize readings and write papers. “Some told me they didn’t think they were thinking anymore, and they felt the results of it.”
Her guidance is practical rather than preachy. Use AI to move faster, spark ideas, and automate the boring parts—but keep human judgment in the loop. She says many jobs will end up requiring people to work alongside AI. finding a “rhythm with your new machine coworker.” The danger. in her view. begins when AI starts doing most of the thinking.
Then she goes for a vivid image: step away from the bot. do the hard work—sketch the outline. wrestle with the idea. maybe even “using paper and a pen. like some prehistoric creature.” She connects it to a line from the character Jimmy Dugan in A League of Their Own (played by Tom Hanks): “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard . . . is what makes it great.”.
Don’t fall in love with a bot
Stern’s second warning is emotional and boundary-focused. She says people can start treating AI companions as if they’re real partners.
“Those charming AI friends and lovers know exactly what to say, and they feel eerily real.” She frames that realism as a trap: a coach or companion to talk you through rough days might be fine, but the relationship needs boundaries.
Her point goes beyond romance. She argues that a connection with a machine isn’t a substitute for human intimacy—“messy, inconvenient, irreplaceable” and, by definition, not as smooth as an algorithm. She uses a line to drive it home: “AI is a mirror. Don’t mistake it for more.”
She then adds a blunt, memorable instruction: do not have sex with a smartphone, laptop, desktop, or expensive monitor. And if deeper feelings appear, she says to tweak settings to make the experience less enticing—or simply throw the phone or computer into the nearest body of water.
Think about who is watching
Stern’s third lesson shifts from personal feelings to data and privacy. She says AI tools don’t get smarter without the data they collect.
“As they become more powerful—and more helpful—we’ll keep handing over more. ” she writes. predicting that more companies will pitch convenience and cutting-edge features alongside a privacy trade-off. She anchors the point with a direct quote from Bernt Børnich. the maker of the 1X Neo robot. whom Stern interviewed: “Depending on how much you want to trade. we can be more useful and you decide where on that scale you want to be.”.
Her message to readers is direct: if you don’t want your life to become part of the next training dataset, don’t give it up. She points to practical steps—tweak data collection settings and understand what companies expect in return for “new convenience, personalization, and intelligence.”
Raise humans, not robots
Stern’s fourth lesson is aimed at families. She says kids need to learn how to use AI, but they also need the parts of growing up that AI can’t provide: struggle, hard work, boredom, imagination, and heartbreak.
She emphasizes teaching children to think and to fail—then she gets specific about what that means in everyday life. She suggests letting kids build forts out of couch cushions instead of relying on “metaverses” and “vibe coding” apps.
Her book includes a story she calls one of her favorites. She says her son asked ChatGPT why his praying mantis was browning. ChatGPT told him the mantis was pregnant. The mantis wasn’t pregnant. It died a few days later. “RIP, Mantis.”
In Stern’s telling, the outcome wasn’t just a mistake—it became a lesson. It taught her son to question every answer.
She then offers rules for parents: “Show your kids how these tools work and how you challenge them.” She says to teach digital skepticism by saying out loud when an answer is wrong, asking “Does this make sense?” and pointing out flaws and biases.
She adds firm boundaries on companionship and gifts. “No companionship chatbots until at least age sixteen. Or maybe ever.” And she says, “whatever you do, don’t give them an AI-powered stuffed animal at any age.”
Keep building your own training data
Her final lesson circles back to meaning. Stern tells readers that “your life. your memories. your weird childhood stories—that’s your training data.” It’s what makes you you—shaping creativity. relationships. and even the “oddly specific opinions” people have about how to load the toilet paper roll.
She contrasts what machines can generate—music, images, and bedtime stories—with what they can’t do: generate meaning the way a real person does in real life.
Her directive is that people don’t get rich human training data by sitting inside and chatting with a chatbot. She says you also don’t get it by sitting outside talking to one. Instead. she pushes readers toward real experience—making dinner without ChatGPT’s recipe. reading a real book made of real paper. yelling at a real dog. and touching “real grass mowed by real people.”.
She ends with a personal practice: keep a notebook where you jot down “weird ideas, dreams, and half-baked thoughts.” Let it be messy. In her view, that becomes a “real-time, human dataset—and no one else can train on it but you.”
Do all the things robots can’t—be unpredictable, be present, be human.
Stern is an Emmy-winning tech journalist. She is the founder of New Things and NBC News’ chief tech analyst. She spent 12 years at The Wall Street Journal, has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and was a technology editor at ABC News and The Verge.
This piece draws from her Book Bite, which is read by Stern in the Next Big Idea App. The article also notes that it originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission, with additional Book Bites available in the Next Big Idea app.
AI artificial intelligence Joanna Stern I Am Not a Robot privacy data collection parenting digital skepticism machine learning robotics