What happens when AI becomes a part of everything?

“I Am Not a Robot” looks, on the surface, like an attempt to assess the value of AI – a doomed endeavor as the technology continues to improve. (“One of the biggest obstacles I faced was that the technology was getting better faster than I could test or write,” she notes.) At a deeper level, however, the book is a performance in which Stern models the process of deciding whether different types of AI are good for her as an individual. She states that she wrote “I Am Not a Robot” entirely herself (the words “emerged in my brain and came to the page through the keyboard of my MacBook”), but she also used “BookBots”: custom AI agents that she created using ChatGPT and Claude. These bots, she explains, had access to her outlines and transcripts, and throughout the writing process, “they researched, summarized work, processed data, edited sections, suggested better words, brainstormed, and even replicated illustration ideas.” (When the book was finished, they wrote…