Joanna Stern is not a robot, but she lived with them | Decoder

My guest today is longtime friend of the show Joanna Stern. You all know Joanna: she is the former senior personal technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal, a former Decoder guest host, one of my co-founders at The Verge, and also just one of my very closest friends.

Joanna just left that lofty perch at the Journal to start her own media company called New Things, and she’s starting with her new book about AI called I Am Not a Robot, which is out this week on May 12th. So we had Joanna on to talk about all of that, especially what she learned going all in on automation.

0:00 Intro / Cold open
0:54 Welcome & introducing Joanna Stern
2:01 Joanna's new book "I Am Not a Robot" & New Things
3:13 Are consumer AI products actually good?
7:15 Is there a killer consumer AI product?
13:23 What AI has Joanna kept using after the experiment?
16:41 Wearable AI: Meta glasses & the Bee Bracelet
21:32 Culture change & humanoid robots
27:20 Why AI companies ship half-baked products
31:34 Privacy trade-offs: surveillance, cost vs. convenience
33:40 AI companions & Joanna's AI boyfriend
40:14 Rules for AI & no phones for kids
43:00 Starting New Things: why YouTube?
49:09 Medium is the message: algorithm vs. editorial judgment
52:07 Data narrows you / CarPlay teaser

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