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Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast

Joanna Stern is PROBABLY Not a Robot

26 May 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 4.398 Joanna Stern

If Apple doesn't provide me a large language model to talk to in a way, I don't care.

0

4.859 - 8.344 Marques Brownlee

It took me like half an hour to watch the video because I kept pausing it and laughing so much.

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8.424 - 11.669 Joanna Stern

I'm a little scared about Waymos on New Jersey highways.

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11.91 - 13.352 Marques Brownlee

It's a different type of driver.

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13.592 - 25.431 Joanna Stern

They say AI is going to change health care. What does that really mean? AI is going to change our streets, our highways. What does that really mean? Oh, we're going to get humanoid robots in our homes that are just going to change our lives forever. What does that really mean?

29.613 - 32.017 Marques Brownlee

Joanna, thank you for joining me on The Wave Phone Podcast.

32.038 - 32.538 Joanna Stern

Thank you for having me.

32.739 - 32.959 Marques Brownlee

Yeah.

33.12 - 36.386 Joanna Stern

All the way here in Kearney, New Jersey, which is 20 minutes away from my house.

Chapter 2: How does Joanna Stern's experience with AI shape her views?

280.694 - 281.796 Marques Brownlee

That's usually what he's good at.

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281.86 - 295.387 Joanna Stern

it feels like that's where the conversation usually goes, right? I mean, I've watched your interviews with him too. Yeah, with the CEO. Yeah, with the CEO. But there are other companies where the, I would say, what's a good example of?

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295.567 - 313.323 Marques Brownlee

I mean, I talk to YouTube CEO in the weeds of the products all the time. I haven't done an interview with him in a while on camera, but we did do one and that was very product focused. And I think in general, just when I talk on camera about stuff, I'm trying to connect it to the viewer. And that is through the products that we're both using. So we have experiences with the products.

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313.363 - 322.262 Marques Brownlee

We think there are things that are great about it. We think there are things that could be better about it. And then the competition, you know, unveils some shortcomings and we get to compare and contrast. So that's what's fun to me.

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322.242 - 331.684 Joanna Stern

I feel like actually what's really interesting is that right now in the tech industry, the closest CEOs to the products are the AI companies because they're the founders.

332.065 - 332.265 Marques Brownlee

True.

332.646 - 347.411 Joanna Stern

Yeah. Right? Yeah. Like you've got the Microsofts, you've got the Amazons, you've got Apple. and they're not the founders anymore, right? And they're making these big decisions about cloud infrastructure and all of the things that are not the consumer product.

347.471 - 365.842 Joanna Stern

But when you go and talk to the Dario's or the Sam Altman's of the world right now, they're also really deep still into the product that they helped create. So you have these conversations look, there are plenty of conversations these guys are having right now, right? They're on the circuit and everyone is talking to them.

365.883 - 373.782 Joanna Stern

But if you're a person like me or you, you can get really good conversation around the products because they're in it.

Chapter 3: How does Joanna's new media venture differ from traditional media?

551.523 - 570.287 Joanna Stern

Yeah, I think that would be a tough video for you to do. Like you would have a very short shelf life and you would hear from a lot of people saying like, I just switched to Gemini or I just switched to this. Like every week it's different. And I'm very clear in this book to say, I never actually mentioned model names. Maybe there's one or two places where I mentioned 4.0 or something like that.

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570.387 - 587.891 Joanna Stern

But I really, because I knew that if, you know, writing a book, you only want to sell it for like a day. I mean, yeah. Or apparently successful authors don't want it to be sold for just a day. I'm not really – I don't know yet. I don't know if I'm going to be a successful author. But I think the themes of it, right?

0

Chapter 4: What are the implications of John Ternus becoming the new Apple CEO?

587.911 - 607.898 Joanna Stern

So if I was using an image generator, right, I knew that wasn't going away. Yes, there's some examples in this like where the image generator just like completely gaslights me and keeps saying like I was generating a picture for my son of five hamsters. And it kept being like – Yeah, no, there's five hamsters in this image. And we're like, no, there's six hamsters in this image, you know?

0

608.038 - 625.83 Joanna Stern

And then they'd be like, no, no, look, I did it again. And then it'd be like seven hamsters. And some stuff like that has gotten better. But yeah, thematically, I really tried to just stay on that and not be mentioning specific models because if I had like at the time, I don't know. GPT would have been the best.

0

625.87 - 632.146 Joanna Stern

And then, you know, today people believe Claude or Gemini or, you know, Gemini is probably getting updated in a few weeks at IO.

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632.166 - 632.507 Marques Brownlee

Exactly.

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632.727 - 633.57 Joanna Stern

We can't say.

633.77 - 652.256 Marques Brownlee

Yeah. So to your point, AI is a lot more than just the chatbots. There's the self-driving cars. There's the medical breakthroughs. There's all kinds of stuff. What was the most surprising thing that you maybe found in looking at all these different things? Because the word AI now, it includes a lot of things we used to call, what did we call it before? Machine learning.

652.617 - 658.21 Marques Brownlee

Yeah, machine learning, exactly, or even neural links or whatever, all this other stuff. What are you surprised by?

659.202 - 680.856 Joanna Stern

Well, there's a lot of surprising moments in the book just in terms of my usage. I think one of the big messages that I want people to know in this book, and I think maybe your viewers already know it or listeners already know it, but there are so many places right now where we hear about this hate of AI. You might hear it from your friends or from your listeners or viewers.

680.836 - 698.462 Joanna Stern

And the truth is, AI is already in your life. There's just no way you're going to be able to say no to it. Right. And you've made this point before, like about the image processing and the AI and the algorithms that go into so many different things. But I think even broader and deeper than that, for instance, one examples, I have a big chapter in here about AI reading my mammogram.

Chapter 5: What challenges does Joanna face in her independent media journey?

954.405 - 960.095 Joanna Stern

All these parts of your life are going to be going through a computer. You would have been like, hell no.

0

960.395 - 964.643 Marques Brownlee

People of the time certainly didn't believe it, let alone want it.

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964.623 - 965.163 Joanna Stern

Right.

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965.184 - 965.424 Marques Brownlee

Yeah.

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965.444 - 978.175 Joanna Stern

You're just like, no. And then if you told them actually 10 years after that, it's all going to be on a little screen that you put in your pocket. And then they told two year old Marquez, you're going to review those screens. You're going to be.

978.495 - 980.818 Marques Brownlee

Hell yeah. Be pumped.

981.638 - 992.388 Joanna Stern

You're going to be a famous reviewer of little rectangles in your screen and screen rectangles. You've been like, OK, I want to be an astronaut.

992.648 - 993.049 Unknown

Yeah.

993.069 - 993.369 Joanna Stern

Mommy.

Chapter 6: How does Joanna's book explore the impact of AI on daily life?

1217.861 - 1246.027 Joanna Stern

Mm hmm. Like the job displacement is real and people right now, I mean, I just started this new media company and the amount of incoming I have from young people out of college who just can't get a job because they feel like AI has taken over these basic tasks, whether it's video editing, whether it's design, writing, that feels real and people are furious about it.

0

1246.307 - 1248.21 Joanna Stern

And they're like, why do we need this technology?

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1248.848 - 1263.191 Marques Brownlee

It's hard to answer now. And that's the point of being in this moment in time. I have my nuanced take, which I say it kind of relates back to smartphones. I saw like the time before smartphones where I was like playing around with the VHS camcorder and there was a bunch of different tech.

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1263.231 - 1283.192 Marques Brownlee

And then, you know, smartphones came along and they brought all these different technologies into this one supercomputer in your pocket. And it's gotten really, really, really good. And also it's sort of slowed down and improvement. And I have a hard time picturing a post-smartphone world, meaning we've moved on from this form factor of the rectangle in your pocket to something else.

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1284.413 - 1301.874 Marques Brownlee

A lot of these big tech companies are trying to prepare themselves for a post-smartphone world. Oh, what if it's a glasses thing? What if it's a computer on your face? So they're all trying that stuff. But I personally still have a hard time imagining that the smartphone isn't the center of that universe. Do you have a hard time with that?

1301.934 - 1304.016 Marques Brownlee

Or do you feel like we could just move on from smartphones?

1304.283 - 1312.048 Joanna Stern

I have a picture at the end of the book. Bring it back to the book, okay? Can we get a tight shot of that?

1312.703 - 1329.743 Marques Brownlee

So for audio listeners, there's a then, a now, and a soon is exactly what I was talking about. The then is someone sitting down in front of a computer with a tower PC. The now is just holding the supercomputer in your pocket. And the soon is this girl with some cool glasses on. That's me.

1329.763 - 1330.564 Joanna Stern

That's you. Yeah, yeah.

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