Joanna Stern: An AI Immersion for 365 Days

Joanna Stern: An AI Immersion for 365 Days

From Ground Truths by Eric Topol

May 13, 2026 · 58 min

About this episode

Joanna Stern discusses her experiences and insights on AI in health technology after a year of immersion.

Joanna Stern was the Wall Street Journal technology journalist for 12 years. She’s an Emmy award winner for her documentary E-Ternal , and recently started her own company New Things , with added advice from ChatGPT! Over the years at WSJ, I relied on Joanna’s reviews of technology for many purchases (and things I avoided) reflecting her keen and brutal assessments. I also had fun working with her on some of her video assessments of health technologies. Her book I AM NOT A ROBOT is both hilarious and highly informative . It is a terrific primer for those who are not fully grounded in AI getting into the history of AI and right up to date with generative AI’s progress. To get a sense for why AI thought she was the next Tina Fey, check out the back cover! No surprise she got me laughing hard throughout the conversation, no less while reading the book. Here is a short YouTube video she posted on her All In AI year of 2025, referred to during the podcast. Much of her testing of >100 AI products related to medicine and health care, which is what we especially got into during our conversation. She has 3 major rules in her assessment of AI: (1) Ruthless testing; (2) Benchmark vs human…

People in this episode

Host: Eric Topol

Guest: Joanna Stern

Topics covered

  • AI
  • health technology
  • journalism
  • personal experience
  • product assessment

Keywords

  • AI
  • healthcare
  • Joanna Stern
  • technology reviews
  • generative AI
  • breast cancer
  • dental AI

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Wall Street Journal, New Things

Books & works: E-Ternal, I AM NOT A ROBOT

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