698: Joanna Stern - How to Think for Yourself in the Age of AI, Why Deep Work Still Matters, Making Career Decisions With ChatGPT, and How to Stay Human on Purpose

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My Guest: Joanna Stern is an Emmy Award-winning technology journalist, chief technology analyst for NBC News, and founder of the independent media company, "New Things." She is best known for her 12-year tenure at The Wall Street Journal, and for authoring the New York Times bestseller I Am Not a Robot.

Key Learnings

Joanna dedicated her book to her parents "who taught me to think for myself, and the AIs, robots, and machines that made me wonder if I really was." In an age when AI can do the thinking for us, the most valuable thing we can teach our kids is to think for themselves.

Walt Mossberg invented tech journalism for humans. His first column: "Computers are too hard to use, and it's not your fault." Without Walt, we don't have a category where technology built for humans is reviewed by humans.

AI won't replace the radiologist. It'll make them better. Joanna sat with her doctor while AI scanned her mammogram. The AI flagged three suspicious spots. Two the doctor had already dismissed as benign. But one was something the doctor hadn't caught. She marked it for follow-up. Then the doctor pointed to other cases where SHE had caught things the AI missed. It's not a replacement. It's a partnership.

The same technology that finds cancer is the same technology that can autonomously send missiles. That's the great tension of our time. Every powerful technology has good and bad uses.

AI colleagues are coming. Joanna has two employees and one AI agent. She predicts that within a year, she'll have full AI employees. Great management books haven't been written yet about how to lead a mixed team of humans and agents. Someone is going to write them.

Concert ticket prices tell you everything about human connection right now. Every artist is selling out football stadiums. People are craving in-person interaction more than ever.