Book: I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything and Replace (Almost) Everyone by Joanna Stern
Genre: Nonfiction
Publisher: Harper
Publication date: 2026

Source: Hardback borrowed from library

Summary: Joanna Stern, a technology journalist, spent a year diving deep into the world of AI. She rode in self-driving cars, played with a robot dog, let AI diagnose medical situations, developed relationships with chat bots, and explored how close we are to having a robot load the dishwasher and fold the laundry (not very, but people are working on it!).

I Am Not a Robot tells the story of Stern’s year including the moments when AI provided better solutions than other available resources and when it didn’t. The book presents information in an attractive format with lots of illustrations, photos, and sidebars.

Thoughts: I am not an AI user. Well, at least, not deliberately. The few times that I played around with tools that presented themselves (whether I wanted them or not) were unimpressive. And, worse, the tools projected unwarranted confidence in their erroneous responses or summarized something in a way that was intended to be helpful but was more convoluted than the original item.

This book confirmed one of my suspicions. The good stuff is behind a pay wall. The most useful tools scavenge up gobs of personal data to produce helpful results (and then they turn around and share that data as training material for future AI tools.) It takes a fair amount of sophistication with how to use these tools to set up the sort of bots that can learn what you want and help you achieve that. In other words, good AI costs money, needs to know a lot about me, and will take some time and study to set up well.

A lot of AI tools have both good sides and evil sides. Early in the book, Stern was comforted by the AI technology that examines mammogram results to produce more accurate results than radiologists. She was discomfited by a similar use of AI technology in dentistry to detect tiny decays that would never have been spotted in the past but can now be used to con patients into getting treatment that we probably don’t need.

In spite of my skepticism, a part of me really wants AI to work in ways that will help me live independently as I age. I want self-driving taxis available when I can no longer safely drive myself. I want an AI elder companion who can remind me to take my medicine, help me stave off loneliness, and call someone if I fall or I’m unresponsive. Preferably, this companion is soft and feels more like living with a very smart pet than a robot.

For now, though, I intend to wait to embrace AI. Besides the environmental impact and the ethical/financial implications of training AI on human-produced content without their knowledge, the most compelling reason for me to stay away from AI was this, that I learned from the book: AI demonstrably makes people stupider. Students don’t learn as much when they rely on AI tools to do their homework. Highly trained professionals lose some of their skill when they use AI tools to enhance their work.

I’m at the use-it-or-lose-it stage of life when the more that I exercise my brain, the longer that my mind will remain sharp. This is not the time to off-load my research, planning, and creative thinking.

Appeal: If you’re heavily invested in using AI, you probably already read this book. If not, I suggest it as a good overview for someone who doesn’t want a lot of technical jargon but does want to figure out what all this AI stuff is about and where it might be going.