Morning Brew Daily - Former WSJ Reporter Joanna Stern Handed Her Life to AI for 365 days

Episode Date: June 19, 2026

#871: Former WSJ tech columnist Joanna Stern spent a year using AI for almost everything. She had her mammogram read by an algorithm, wore a bracelet that recorded every conversation, rode in a Waymo, and let ChatGPT help her decide whether to leave the Wall Street Journal. This year-long experiment is captured in her new book, “I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything,” which reflects on what AI actually does well, what it absolutely does not, and why humanoid robots are so dang funny. To learn more visit https://www.servicenow.com Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.swap.fm/l/mbd-note⁠⁠⁠  Watch Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow⁠ This experience may not be representative of other Wealthfront clients, and there is no guarantee of future performance or success. Experiences will vary. Neal Fryman and Toby Howell, are clients of Wealthfront, receive cash compensation from Wealthfront Brokerage for paid testimonials in this podcast, creating a conflict of interest. More details available via the referral link.  https://wealthfron.com/morningbrew New clients get 3.30% base APY from program banks + additional 0.75% boost for 3 months on your uninvested cash (max $150k balance). Terms and conditions apply. The Cash Account, which is not a deposit account, is offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC ("Wealthfront Brokerage"), Member FINRA/SIPC. Wealthfront Brokerage is not a bank. The Annual Percentage Yield ("APY") on cash deposits as of January 30, 2026, is representative, requires no minimum, and may change at any time. References to the APY for the Wealthfront Cash Account, including any APY increase, are to the APY paid by insured depository institutions that participate in our cash sweep program (the "Program Banks”). Wealthfront Brokerage sweeps cash balances to Program Banks, where they earn the variable APY. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AI is uncharted territory, and many leaders are trying to navigate through without a guide to help them. That's why Morning Brew created The Intelligence Shift, a new podcast with PWC. It's all about how AI is fundamentally changing different industries. Host Dan Priest is joined by a top-tier roster of industry leaders who share real stories and real lessons learned. Get guidance from industry experts. Listen to the intelligence shift wherever you get your podcasts. If I go to a city where there is Waymos, I'm 100% taking it. 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. And so I was wrong at saying this is something that more people will have because clearly nobody has them. Good morning for Daily show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, a special holiday episode about letting tech control your life. We're joined by famous tech reviewer and AI convert, Joanna Stern. It's

Friday, June 19th. Let's ride. Good morning. It's June 10th. 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. 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. Toby, you look a little rough. Everything okay? 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. 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. 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. To put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. That's servicenow.com. Let's head to our interview with Joanna Stern. Joanna, thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me here. 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? 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.

And 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, you know, 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. That's a good example, right? Help. I've got a rash in a place I don't want to say publicly. A lot of us now trust that response.

And there's been a lot of research coming out of academic institutions saying that's maybe not the best thing. And we've seen a lot of these companies putting a lot of effort into that, chat GPT health, co-pilot health, all of these. But I actually went a step further and had my mammogram and breast ultrasound read by AI. And I was, I think for me, one of the lasting things for me is that I will always now go to a place that has AI. reading those because I heard from the radiologists how helpful they thought this was. It does not replace them. They feel very confident that their jobs are safe, but they are working hand in hand with AI. So it kind of goes back to the first thing. I said work, but okay, when other people, when other people's work affects us as humans and our life. And medical is one of those,

transportation is another, et cetera. I guess the flip side of that question is, where did AI fall short or disappoint you? The name of the book is I am not a robot, right? Part of that was that I wanted to make clear, like, we are still humans, and there's some deep meaning behind that. But also, I have become obsessed with humanoid robots. I just think they are hilarious.

I've long reviewed hardware and technology gadgets, and I'm like, this is the pinnacle of technology hardware, right? Like, we are going to have the human version of technology. We can all say that's super scary. It is, but it can also be the dream, right? Like, we all know the Jetson's dream. And so I tested and talked to a lot of robot companies, and they're just so far away. They're just so funny.

So, yeah, what are your thoughts on robots? They're bad. They're bad right now. They're bad. Are they bad in industrial settings? Are you talking about in a personal home setting? In industrial settings, they are absolutely far along. We hear from the Amazon saying we have millions of robots working and they're great and they

have saved us so many, so much money and man hours. Great, that's great. And that makes total sense, right? An industrial setting is the same. It's a carbon copy. They can program these robots to know the aisles, the numbers on the aisles. Life for humans outside of the industrial factory is not like that, especially our homes. Our homes, our apartments, they're messy.

I forget which company it was, but they did a demo of it unloading the dishwasher. And it's bending down in such as awkward way. They're like, great. They're recreating my drunk roommate trying to unload the dishwasher. And that was actually my video that went viral. Oh, that was yours. That was the one X Neo. Yes.

And part of the reason I had done that video is I had been following that company for the book for the year. So that was the second or, yeah, it was the second time I had met Neo. And they were talking about how they were planning to release it, right? and they were going to do these beta testing. But I had met Neo previously to making that video, which was back in November. And I mean, watching these robots do the things that are so simple for us is hilarious right now. And so the reason I say, first of all, I'm fascinated by them. Yes, they're bad, but I'm really fascinated by how they get better.

And the way they get better, and I talk a lot about this in the book, is that they need more data, right? We think about the chat GPTs and all the generative AI chatbots and the cloud codes of the world, right? They sucked up years of internet data. What these robots don't have are years of data and visuals of us folding laundry or us doing mundane tasks in our house like sweeping the floor. And so now they have to collect all of that data in pretty funny ways, either by inviting a robot in our house and teleoperating it with a VR headset. So it's fundamentally like a human remote control, or they have to record us, take video of us doing ridiculous things. You do not want to see us trying to fold laundry. It ain't pretty.

No, you guys wouldn't qualify for the testers. We would not be the A level. I'm looking at your shirt. It's very clear. You spent a week in Phoenix traveling exclusively in autonomous Waymo's. Do you think your kids will ever get a driver's license? I think they will, but they just won't use their own driving habits that much. They will know how to jump in and help these cars get back on track, or they will drive in certain areas that the self-driving cars just can't do it or in certain weather conditions.

But I think that driving is going to change. Now, my 8-year-old is going to be 9. You know, it's like give or take 10, 9 year. I don't know. I think my 4-year-old, though, is probably stands more of that chance of like that hybrid job of like working with the AI to drive. And were you overall impressed, disappointed by the Waymo experience? So I'm mixed on it. Look, people ask me, like, what is stuck with you from this year?

And so if I go to a city where there is Waymo's, I'm 100% taking Waymo's over Uber or Lyft. I'm just like, this is awesome. Nobody's in the car with me. It's more private. It feels quite safe. And you're just like, wow, you know, like you got to take your selfie with the Waymo. It's super fun. Have you guys been in them?

I literally just had my selfie moment. I went to Phoenix for the first time, was blown away by it. It was almost giddy while I was back there because, yeah, it's just this magical experience. Exactly. And now any city I go to, Los Angeles, San Francisco, it's just like, yes, they have Waymo there. I'm firing that up. That is absolutely stuck with me. There is a story in the book, though, where, like, we did almost get in an accident

and some of it, like, caused because I had hired a videographer to shoot video of our car, of the Waymo, and he was, he wasn't hanging out. Like, it wasn't like he was doing a major stunt. But, you know, if you're filming a video, you kind of shoot your, put your camera out the front of the window. So he's in front of the actual Waymo in a car that's being driven by somebody else. And the Waymo freaks out. It's like, what is this thing? It looks like it's, you know, a body hanging out a window and it swerves off to the right.

And there wasn't actually, like, a shoulder for it to swerve off on. So, like, cars start, you know, honking and going around. And it was just an example to me of, like, that these are machines that are driving. and they have far more eyes and sensors than humans, but sometimes they see things that, like, they don't, they've never seen before. If you're a human and you're driving, you see a camera, you're like, oh, I'm going to be on TV, guys,

versus this robot that's like, holy crap, I, you know, could get in an accident, making tons of calculations, and swerves off to the right. If Waymo was one of the experiences that stuck with you over your year, what was one device or kind of workflow that you were happy to ditch once the year was over, that you were like, ugh, I'm glad AI is no longer a part of this aspect of my life? I'm mixed on this. I have a good answer, but I'm mixed on it because one of the things I did was try to wear

as many AI wearable devices as I could. And that included all the friend necklace and the bracelets and all of this. And so the one that I actually did stick with for the year was called the B bracelet. and Amazon actually bought it at the end of summer of 2025, and it records everything you say. So if I was sitting right here, it would record this all. It would go up to Amazon servers. It would transcribe that.

It would actually get rid of the audio, so I wouldn't be able to listen to this again. Thank God no one can listen to this conversation. And then I would get a transcription of that. I'd get a summary of this conversation, and I'd get a list of to-dos. So if I said to one of you guys, like, we're definitely going to buy 100 copies of this book today,

I would open my app and it would say, don't forget to buy 100 copies of the I Am Not a Robot book. And it's amazing, right? Your passive listening, you don't have to use your brain as much when you're in this active moment. I don't have to like, oh, yeah, let me write down what I told them. But also it's like a surveillance device. Like it's constantly listening to me and it's constantly sending information to this company. And so that was an example of one that I was not sad to lose, but I also think eventually we're going to kind of get there. By the way, I read your review of the bee and immediately ordered it.

Oh, no. And never... I've never seen you wear. I know, because the issue is, is I have an Apple Watch on one wrist, a whoop on the other. Where's the B going to fit in? That's too many braces. Well, that's a perfect example. Love that because I think this functionality is just going to come to one of those, right?

That's what's going to happen. You'll... And maybe we'll more actively do it, right? We'll hit record and we'll have... and be moved towards that, honestly. Like, now I have to press the button to record the conversation. But there's tons of these devices. There's the plod, the whatever happened to the friend, I don't know.

You know, this is an idea that is pretty simple to do now. What share of the AI devices that you were using were actually AI? And what I mean by that is how much of the book could you have written in 2021 before ChatGBT, like robot lawnmowers predated large language models? So I guess the bigger question is how much. of this AI revolution is just branding? A lot of it was new. And like to the point where I had a hard time turning in the book because new things kept

coming out, right? There was like a new AI ring. There was a new AI agent platform. All of this Claudebot and Mulpbot stuff happened after the book. And I was like, crap, you know? Like I got to go back and write. So a lot of this was coming. But a lot, like, as you point out, I do, I try to do home robots, right?

And the best home robots are kind of the dumb home robots we've always had, where they have to go from point A to point B and do something. They have to clean. They have to mow the lawn. Shout out Rumba. Shout out Rumba, right? RIP. RIP. But they're getting better because of some of this new AI and the transformer models that are able to now make these better at what that single task is. That goes back to the humanoid, which is that the humanoid has to do like a lot of things, right? You're inviting into your house, back to your industrial question, which is a great one, that's, that your house is messy. It's different. It always looks different.

You move your chair. You decide I'm gonna redecorate. I don't do that, but people do. And that's confusing. The robot has to keep learning. It has to keep knowing these things. And so if it's gotta do multiple tasks and do it in this environment, that's why it needs so much data to get smarter versus,

hey, I'm just gonna vacuum and go from, point A to point B. So we mentioned that what your kids have driver's license when they grow up, are you also worried about your kids asking AI, the millions of questions that kids ask instead of you? Do you think that changes how they develop into human beings? It's a rather large question, but they now have this infinite knowledge box that they can just talk to constantly. Does that worry you? It does worry me. There's a big part of the book about this. And I love, I actually think I'm a great parent at this, even though I am the worst parent because I've given them all this technology, and they literally are like, when's the next robot coming home? When's the next chatbot model

coming out? Like they are four and eight and know a lot about this industry. On the flip side, they have heard us, they'll say, like, let's ask chat GPT what we feed the snake, right? And we'll go and ask chat chit, but they're also. You have a snake? We're getting a snake. We just got to sign. It's an AI snake. It's not real. Is it exciting? I don't know. Who's idea? was it? My eight-year-olds. He's turning nine and he wanted a snake. And do you know that snakes live for, like, they never die? I don't know. They should know. They don't know if they probably do that. They can just release it in your enemy's house. Do you have any other animals in your household? We have a dog. Okay, good. Dog. Because my mom grew up with a gerbil and then her brother grew up with a snake,

the snake ate the gerbil. Yeah. No, I'm aware of what kind of dead rodents we need to have in our house to feed. Because we've had this experience of asking so much and also, seeing answers be wrong, they are very quick to question what they say. And so, like, we might ask and be like, is that right? And they'll ask me. And I'm like, we've got to go to the source. Like, let's go look at, let's go find Wikipedia, which is maybe, you know, it's a great source. I mean, like, I'm like, you know what, actually, kids, let's go pull out encyclopedia of Britannica and go to the library. I'm such a good parent. Definitely do that. It kind of is brutal, though, for parents who used to be able, they were the word of God. Like Google didn't exist. You couldn't

fact check anything. Now there's a fact checker always, always. But also like parents were always making stuff up. Exactly. Possibly. And like I love that. I think I think parenting is hilarious because I'll just be like, yeah, that's a true thing. You know, like, and you don't want to lie to your kids, but sometimes you're like, that's for sure what happens. You know, where that's, and now you're kind of like, oh, we can go to this Oracle. And I just don't want them to think that this is the Oracle of Truth. And they have learned from a very young age that it isn't. Toby, what's one thing spreading faster than AI? Macha. I mean, that stuff is everywhere. No, well, yes, that too, but I meant AI risk. More AI tools mean more opportunities for something to go wrong. And most security

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It's specialized trained on decades of real shipping data and billions of actual orders. It can adapt to your unique business, alerting you. to low stock recommending carrier selections and rates in automating tasks so you can stay one step ahead. The sooner you switch, the sooner you start saving time and money. Get started today and get 60 days free at shipstation.com with code MBDS. That's shipstation.com code MBDS. Shipstation.com. Code MBDS. Taxes and fees apply. It's freezing in here. What gives? I'm trying to preserve my freshness, Neil. Like how I herb stores and handles their supplements and sports products in GMP, ISO, and NSF certified climate-controlled fulfillment centers

designed to protect potency and product integrity. That way, you don't get melted gummy vitamins. Toby, that only works on supplements and sports products, not... And I-HIRB stands behind every purchase. If something doesn't meet your expectations, they make it right with easy returns and simple refunds. Head to I-H-E-R-B-Daly and use code M-B-Daly for 20% off your purchase. That's iherb.com slash MB Daily. So AI has a huge PR problem. Yeah.

People hate it. Let's say Sam Altman hires you as the CMO of OpenAI. What would you do to improve its image? Well, no, I really like this question because the hard part that I'm having linked here is that I think their PR problem is sometimes that people just associate it being with the soras of the world and what other slop people see. right? And as much as they try to do the marketing push around the medical and the et cetera, people don't always see those results. And they also may not be powered by open AI models, to be clear. I think they will be as they invest more and more in that. So one of like the points I'm trying to make in this book is very much, even if you don't use AI, you decide I'm not going

to invite it into my life. It's still going to invade your life, right? Because you're going to go to that doctor, you're going to go to Mount Sinai, and it's going to read your mammogram without you even knowing. You're going to go to the dentist. There's a whole chapter in here on dentist in my newsletter I was just about this. 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, right? So all these places in your life, and that's, I wouldn't do that as the market CMO, you know, that would not be a good part of my job. But all these places in your life where actually things might be getting better

is powered by AI, I'm really bad at being a marketing officer. Well, this is why you started your own media happening. I'm really bad at tech PR. One other thing that I was wondering. It's a great question though. Yeah.

What would you? No one has cracked it. I mean, they're paying people a ton of money and they're coming out every year that seems to be like Super Bowl commercials or billboards that they try to crack the code to tell people that how this tech is improving their lives and they just there seems to be a very visceral reaction against AI. And maybe it's just the fundamental premise of these large language models are built

upon allegedly stolen works and the soras powered by stealing YouTube videos. And I don't know if that's the main source of antagonism against AI, but it's certainly a large source, at least among like creative types that we talk to. I will say I love this topic because it wasn't so prevalent when I was writing it. And in fact, I'm like just doing a video on the book right now. And like, here's the thing that I wasn't really capturing at that moment, which was the hate, which it was brewing, right? Like a lot of people, the water issue, the power issue. But now it's way deeper than that, right?

It's the job issue for the generation coming out of college right now, which is so real. If I was the CMO of Anthropic, I'd probably tell Dario Amade to stop saying that it's going to wake out 50% of jobs like nonstop. No, it kind of works. But on the flip side to his, like, he's been super honest about it. and these they've heard it. You know, I don't know. As a journalist, I'm like, I want him to be honest. As a marketing officer, I'm like, don't be honest, man.

But you've seen a lot of different tech revolutions happen. Does this happen every time a disruption occurs, or is this a uniquely AI thing? I think, and that's why I wanted to write the book, because I thought we were on this cusp of another revolution, right? We had the internet. We were all too young, like 1995, and we were young, and we lived through it. I don't know. You guys look a lot younger than me.

Let's not talk about it. We don't have to go there. Okay. So, and we lived through those, and there was definitely fear, but there was all these life-changing things that we decided the convenience of that was better than whatever else was before that, right? like shopping on our computers and our phones was better than having to go to the store every 10 minutes to get something. And we saw that throughout life, right?

Same with hailing a car or ordering food and all of this on-demand stuff we got from smartphones and from faster networks and a whole combination of technologies that collided to give us the smartphone revolution. So I thought, okay, maybe we're at that moment right now. And let me try to figure out what the future looks like here. Maybe we're not, and this is all hype and this book is totally wrong. Okay, that's fine. I'm fine being wrong. But to your point of like the backlash right now and also the fact that we lived through this social media era, I think that there's something different about this moment. We're also at this moment where we're trying to talk about technology replacing humans versus helping humans.

Now, I think I do a good job of the book of talking about where we can help humans. that's what the CMO really needs to be doing. Which is, okay, I've come full circle now. I needed some time to brainstorm and now we're good. This was your onboarding process. Yes, yes. Thank you. And I look forward to joining.

Let's talk about something you know really well, which is reviewing tech gadgets. So how good of a predictor are you at predicting a tech gadgets feature success? Like after using something for a few days, can you tell this is going to be a hit or this is going to be a flop? Yes. I have pretty good accuracy. I would say there are some in my history that I got wrong, but I got most right. Do you have any top of mind that you got wrong? Yes.

I think that I don't think I got it wrong. I think that the Vision Pro was absolutely a great piece of technology. I just thought Apple would iterate on it faster and make it smaller, make it cheaper, make it not feel like you're wearing a face computer, do all these things, and improve it faster. And so I was wrong at saying this is something that more people will have because clearly nobody has them. It is so funny now that you put all this time and effort into it and too heavy on face being the number one thing. Like you can't get around that. Like it's a miraculous piece of tech.

I was very clear about it in the review. Like I wore that like my review was 24 hours wearing that thing and I was very clear like even after an hour I am miserable. But I would say that one is the most recent one. Other ones I think I have a pretty good track record. And what were you right about that that succeeded that most people thought would fail? I think the Apple Watch was a really good call on my part. Not that I knew it would be successful, especially when we knew like where they were pricing it and what they were going after. But Apple didn't quite know.

I think Apple did know, but they weren't quite marketing it at first as a focus on fitness and health. And I was such a that point very interested in fitness and wearable health. And I just, it was clear that's where that was going to go. And so my early reviews were a lot about that. While around the subject of wearables, I wear a whoop. And a recent study, thank you. I have a tan line and everything. A recent study came out saying that the sleep score that people got

informed how people felt about their day, even if they got a placebo score, high or low, that dictated how they actually felt in the energy that they were experiencing. Do you feel like it's an issue that these devices, are telling us how we should be feeling. Like, what are the implications of that?

Yeah, like the cycle, right? Like, I read this paper, there's like the psychological effects that like even if you didn't actually sleep well, but this has told you your sleep while, you're like, yay, I'm gonna get through the day. You can reverse gaslight yourself and be awake. I mean, I absolutely know I slept terribly last night. I don't care if whoop told me I slept better.

I know I slept bad. Right, that's the number one complaint I hear about people saying, I don't want to whoop, is because I don't want them to tell me how I feel, But it's also such a small part of your day. Like, you look at it and then I have my entire day to lead. Like, I'm not going to let one number I looked at at 5 a.m. Tell me how the day should be.

But I love that you framed it as a glitch in human software, not, like, AI software. It's that we are susceptible to praise or criticism in equal measure. So I like that framing. We should hire you a CMO of opening up. I don't know if we have that power. I think maybe now I'm the CMO of whoo. Yeah. So you got a lot of jobs.

You used AI for almost everything for a year. We used AI. to ask you a couple questions because we wanted to see what Claude would ask you. Really good questions, maybe better than anything that could come up with. So here's some Claude questions for you, Joanna Stern. What's the last piece of technology you personally downgraded, went from better version to the worst version, and we're happier for it? In the newsletter that I'm doing now, we do every Friday a submission of an old thing where our company is called the new things. And so people submit old things. And one last week, which I really liked this idea,

was a submission was the Harmony, the Logitech Harmony Universal Remote, which was a great universal remote that Logitech made, but they stopped making it. And the submission was, I loved this old thing, and now I buy old ones on eBay, and they still work because it's Bluetooth, so maybe I'm thinking about doing that.

That is interesting. I see that a lot with fans, too. There's like a big fan subculture of all the modern fans that break too easily, but there's some old ones. Not human fans. like, like, yeah. I don't know how to describe it.

They blow air. Air fans. Yeah, air fans. Yeah, but it does seem like, because we were, get one in here. We were discussing this Claude question before, and it seems like culture plays an outsized role in downgrading tech specifically, because wired earphones are not better than, well, some people say, like, the audio

quality is a little different, but in terms of ease of use, but it's just culturally in right now. You see influencers, running influencers, running with wired phones again. I don't use why. I use wired headphones when I sit at my desk all day long. Oh, so you just... Yeah, I've never gone to Bluetooth. Because, first of all, Bluetooth is actually terrible. We all should just admit Bluetooth is terrible.

But when I'm sitting at my desk, if I'm on a call, it, like, it will... There's so many issues with Bluetooth headphones that I find on my Mac, especially if I'm not using Apple's AirPods or the AirPods Pro Max, so, which I don't. I have a pair of Sony's. So, yeah, I have a cord. I have like three of three, three, three point five millimeter cords that I have, I keep one of my backpack, keep one of my desk, and I keep one of my storage closet. Another Claude question. What's a feature that exists on almost every phone or laptop right now that nearly nobody uses but should?

Dang, Claude. Wait, phone? Just like, what's a tech, what's, you know, an app or a feature on a particular, on your phone that you've discovered and you think people don't really know about? Okay, this is, I'm really promoting, you know what, I'm a really good CMO of my own company. You are, you're doing a good job. I'm going to promote the book again? No, maybe, I don't know. But now I'm promoting the newsletter.

So newsletter, thenewthings.com, you can go sign up. We feature a useful thing every Friday. Okay. And last week, we featured a way to change the charging sound on your iPhone. So when you plug it in, you can customize it to say or sound like anything. Oh, no. This is a great answer. So what did you change it to?

Okay, so I changed it to, I had two. One was the Mac boot-up sound because it's just like super nerdy. And the other one, my production assistant was like, we should make it, because we were shooting a video, a screaming, is it a screaming goat? No, it's a screaming sheep. It's actually, I think, a sheep. Give us a noise. Okay. Can we plug in here?

Oh, we don't have a charger in here. I was saying with your own mouth, but you don't have to do that. Okay, but here's the really embarrassing thing. Yesterday I'm on a very quiet bus, very quiet bus commuting home. I'm running out of charge and I plug in and screaming sheep as loud as can be on this quiet bus. Like, picture the quiet car, you know. And people are like, and I'm like, I'm so sorry. And then you should be like, sign up to my newsletter to find out how to do that.

That is an incredible prank to play on someone too. That's what I said at the end of the video. I was like, this may not seem like a useful thing. we call it. But what if you change somebody in your houses and then you film them? That is so good. That is really good. And on TikTok, there are amazing ideas of like movie lines.

Like, you know, like one is like, Von Travolta and Greece singing, you're electrifying and like you plug it in. There's just so many funny ideas. I immediately went to Austin Powers for some reason. Yeah, baby. Yeah. You can't follow the instructions. There's a lot of.

places to find them, but it's actually quite complicated to do. But I think it's a useful and fun thing to do. All right. Let's close out with a head-to-head round. This is a fun, you know, ending of a podcast that we didn't ask a lot about, by the way. We came up with this on our own. We're going to give you

two tech products, and you just pick your favorite betwixt those two tech products. So, first one, Google Maps or Apple Maps. Google. Wow. No, that's neat. That's you. That's surprising. I'm so Apple. I really I thought the modern take was like people are Apple Maps pilled at this point.

Like their attention to details better when you, when it. I do. I think the Maps part is like visually better at this point, but just the date, like I use Apple Maps a lot. Sorry, I use Google Maps a lot just to get phone numbers and contact information and reviews. And I still think it's just better for that. I think the modern take where people are saying is that Apple Maps is not as bad as we thought it was. I think it went from that, but now people are saying it's better. But maybe I'm just.

Joanna saying it's not. I think like in terms of like routing maybe you know I don't know I haven't done like a great map off lately I've got to do a map off uh TikTok or Instagram Instagram me too honestly I don't know why this happened to me but as soon as it was banned you know it was it was off the app store for like 30 minutes or an hour or whatever I never downloaded it again I was like I mean I'm there and I look like the charging sound thing like went completely viral on TikTok so you if you're you need to kind of be there to see what the trends are, especially in, I guess, my line of work. My line of work at the Open AICMO, I definitely need to be on TikTok.

But Instagram, I just have like the combo of the feed and my news stuff coming in, and I feel like actually have a little bit more control over it. iPad Pro or MacBook? Macbook. Kindle or physical book? Physical book, but Kindle, if I'm going on a long trip without kids, it's not happening to me. So just, yeah, just regular physical book.

The amount of Kindles I've lost in the seat back pocket in front of me, though, where it's so small, you forget it's there. I've really only lost two that way, but I can't buy another Kindle at this point. I have heard from a number of readers very upset about Kindle phasing out the old models right now because they've just had Kindles for, I think it's eight to ten years old these models, maybe more, and they're not going to work anymore. They're not going to be updated. You can't even get books on them.

And they're furious because, like, this device works for them. Let's close out with this. So you have launched this new venture and to decide whether to quit your job at the Wall Street Journal, you opened up chatGBT, created a new project called JobBot and uploaded all your notes and deliberations. And it told you straight up to leave. And you did leave. Do you recommend other people do this exercise? I recommend they do the exercise. I don't think you should just implicitly trust the AI on your decision. And to be clear, I deliberated for many months. And I didn't, wasn't just like, well, Chad GPT said. But it was very helpful to me because I had so many points of view and no humans were really telling me what to do. Because one day I would be, you know, telling family members or my wife. And they'd be like, yeah, that's a good point. Maybe you should do that or maybe you should stay. And Chatsybt had this record of how I had been feeling over the real course and had like just basic clear data. And that was very helpful when making that decision. Jobbot. Sounds like something that could be professionalized and productized if you wanted to go that route because you don't have enough jobs already. If one was a CMO of OpenA.I.

All right, Joanna, thanks so much for joining us. She just has a new book out called I Am Not a Robot. My Year using AI to do almost everything. and I just messed it up here in this studio. Look, it never fell one time. It never fell because now I'm holding it up. Also, her new venture is called New Things. You can follow her across social media on YouTube channel.

She also has the newsletter where you can get a very fun tech tip, among other things, every Friday. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you guys for having me. Please turn on the air conditioning in here. We can get out. It's clear. I am not a robot because I am very hot here. Yeah, we can get out of here.

Actually, it's funny. the Neo robot gets overheated and they have to fan it down. Really? Yeah. Maybe that's a big problem with robots. It is. Definitely is. It is.

Yeah, thermals are a big problem. We just talked about the familiar thing today. The little Pokemon-like thing. Oh, yeah. Did you see that? From the room. From the room. Yeah.

What is it? It is a snugable AI pet. But they've actually had those. The same as it doesn't talk and it's supposed to. Talk about actually your. question was really good about old stuff like yeah yeah I saw this thing um you know the there's this pet they have probably Ely or something and it's for old people yeah that's the it's literally a pet that you don't are you one of those media strategy people clicking through slides

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