791: The Messy Intersection of AI, Work, and People, with Joanna Stern

Joanna Stern: I Am Not a Robot

Joanna Stern is an Emmy Award-winning technology journalist who was previously the personal technology columnist at The Wall Street Journal. For many years, she has been one of the most recognizable and entertaining voices in consumer tech, and she just recently launched her own media company and YouTube channel called New Things. Her new book is I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything (Amazon, Bookshop)*.

What if you decided to go to AI first for virtually everything in your life? Joanna Stern decided to do exactly that and captured it all in her recent book. In this episode, we explore how those implications are showing up for a lot of us in the workplace.

Key Points

• Customer service functions are one of many places where organizations are already using AI to supplement or replace work that people used to do.
• Some aspects of AI work are preferred by both customers and employees. For others, having people in the loop is essential.
• AI may eliminate some jobs and hiring. It also presents an opportunity to create work that is more interesting.
• For many aspects of work and research, AI is useful as a “first pass” that helps the human spend more time doing the things that humans do.
• The AI pushback is real and helpful. It allows us to grapple with how we use new technology and the best way for it to show up in our work and lives.

Resources Mentioned

• I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything by Joanna Stern (Amazon, Bookshop)*
• New Things by Joanna Stern

Related Episodes

• Principles for Using AI at Work, with Ethan Mollick (episode 674)
• Becoming an AI-Savvy Leader, with David De Cremer (episode 710)
• Using AI to Make Networking Easier, with Ruth Gotian (episode 766)

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