WHEN I decided to live without artificial intelligence for 48 hours, I figured it would affect some parts of my routine.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to watch Netflix-recommended documentaries or read marketing emails written by bots, for instance. That I could deal with.
What I didn’t expect was that my attempt to avoid all interactions with AI and machine learning would affect nearly every part of my life – what I ate, what I wore, how I got around.
I undertook this experiment with the goal of seeing first-hand just how prevalent AI is in our everyday lives.
Most people are aware that it peppers our social media feeds with targeted ads and powers the chatbots on airline reservation sites.
I wanted to identify all the AI hiding in plain sight, and to find out what life would be like without it. I would spend two days as the No AI Guy.
“Good luck with that!” said Jeff Wilser, the host of the podcast AI-Curious. “I used to say that if you want to avoid AI, you should go be a goat herder in the mountains.
“Now I can’t even say that, because goat herders probably use it, too, wittingly or not. For starters, they check the weather, and nowadays almost every weather prediction is made with AI.”
While researching my subject, I encountered wildly conflicting opinions. Is AI overhyped, merely a glorified spell-check, as some people insisted in interviews with me? Or is it the biggest discovery since fire (actually bigger than fire, since it will replace humans), as others claimed?
Is it taking away our freedom of choice by forcing us to obey biased algorithms? Or is it making our lives better in a thousand small ways, as Garrett Winther, the chief product officer of the venture capital firm Newlab, argued.
“People think AI is scary,” Winther told me, “but, really, it’s improving our lives in ways we don’t even notice, allowing us to breathe easier. Literally.”
He cited a recent New York state AI programme that used the technology to monitor the air for abnormalities such as methane leaks.
Before I started my experiment on a random Monday in October, I had to answer a fundamental question: how should I define AI?
Many people associate the term with generative AI, which burst onto the scene in 2022. It’s the technology that churns out college English papers and concocts images of smiling customers for soft drink ads.
But the AI umbrella also covers other types of programmes capable of learning and evolving – including machine learning, which has been widespread since the 2000s. A machine learning programme updates itself or its predictions based on new data.
To be AI-free, I decided I would avoid both Gen AI and machine learning. I would be a purist.
From the moment I woke up in my New York apartment on Day 1, I realised that Wilser was correct to warn me about AI’s omnipresence.
Still in bed, I reflexively grabbed my iPhone so that I could hold it in front of my face and unlock the screen. But no.
Facial recognition runs on AI. I typed in my passcode like it was 2017.
What could I do with my phone now that it was open? Not much. No Facebook, no Instagram: social media feeds are determined by AI and littered with AI-generated ads.
How about a podcast? Nope. Many podcasts use AI editing programmes to remove the “ums” and awkward silences.
Should I check the news? According to a 2024 Associated Press survey, 70% of journalists reported that their organisations used generative AI tools for research or other purposes. I would be cut off from current events – which could be a nice bonus.
Checking my email was also a no-no. Gmail uses machine learning to weed out spam. I put my iPhone in a drawer.
In the kitchen, my wife, Julie, flicked on the lights. I flicked them off.
“Are you kidding me?” she asked, patiently.
“The energy grid uses machine learning to predict where the demand will be,” I explained.
I told Julie there was no reason to worry, though: I had prepared for this eventuality by purchasing a portable solar-power generator. I plugged a lamp into it and lit up the kitchen with pride.
The fact is, almost every object in our lives is affected by generative AI and machine learning – whether in its design, manufacturing, marketing or shipping.
The question is no longer whether these new technologies touch something, but to what degree.
I decided to rate everything in my life on a scale of one to 10. If something owes its existence almost entirely to AI or machine learning, like the spam emails that clog my inbox, it gets a 10.
What about the tree outside my window?
The New York Department of Parks and Recreation uses cars equipped with visual scanners to conduct an AI-powered tree census, which tracks the health of the city’s more than 600,000 sidewalk trees.
So my neighbourhood maple has been touched by AI, but only tangentially. It scores a mere one out of 10.
I can rest in its shade with just a little guilt.
My business meetings are often conducted over Zoom, which uses AI for noise suppression, among other things. So I was glad to have received an invitation to meet three other non-fiction authors at a restaurant downtown.
What to wear? Certainly not my H&M chinos, which scored a 4 on my ranking. Like many big clothing retailers, H&M uses machine learning to optimise shipping routes, and its designers have experimented with AI-powered tools.
To be safe, I dug out an outfit from the pre-AI era: a bright floral shirt and a pair of checkered pants I had inherited from my grandfather.
How would I get to the restaurant? Uber and Lyft were verboten, since they use AI for pricing, demand and scheduling.
What about hailing a taxi? Still no. Automakers use AI to design parts, and more than half of modern cars come loaded with machine-learning features, such as the sensors that alert you when you have drifted into another lane.
I considered the subway. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority uses AI-enabled software to monitor fare-evasion patterns. And the electronic signs above the platforms – the ones that tell you it’s five minutes till the next train – are coded with the help of generative AI. So the subway received a 2 on my scale.
Not bad. But a safer option might be a bicycle – not a Citi Bike, which uses machine learning to predict demand and determine the placement of bicycles.
Instead, I borrowed my son’s bike from our building’s basement.
Finally, I arrived at my destination, the Hole in the Wall restaurant in the Flatiron district.
How to pay for my food? That was a head-scratcher. Credit card companies use AI to detect fraudulent activity, as does the ATM where I get my cash.
I figured cash was lower on the AI scale than credit cards, so I paid with US$20 bills.
That night, I collapsed into bed. Luckily, my mattress was not one of those “smart mattresses” that adjust the firmness and temperature with AI.
I spent the final hours of my experiment trying to draft this article.
I couldn’t use my MacBook Pro, since it’s loaded with machine learning features, including a trackpad trained to ignore accidental brushes with my palm.
I got down to work on a typewriter I had bought days earlier. I loved the clackety-clack sound, but the ribbon was low on ink.
I switched to pencil and paper. Since my solar-power box had run out of juice, I wrote by candlelight. It was kind of soothing.
I checked the notes I had printed out before the start of my experiment.
And here’s where I should make a confession: some of my research came from ChatGPT.
I’m part of a majority of journalists whose work has been changed by AI.
So how am I feeling in these last few hours? A little unsettled by just how prevalent AI is.
I’d like more transparency. It seems important to know when an image or email is AI-generated. And I’d like more control over the algorithms that influence my life.
I’m also less sure about how the world will look in five years, but more certain that AI will be increasingly involved.
“We’re just at the beginning of the AI Era,” said Wilser, the AI-Curious host.
On the spectrum of AI-is-glorified-spell-check to AI-is-bigger-than-fire, the project has moved me slightly in the bigger-than-fire direction.
If I were to write a sequel to this story in five years, I would have an even more difficult time.
Or, as Jeff Crume, a scientist who makes popular AI explainer videos, put it: “You mean when ChatGPT writes a sequel to this article in five years?”
Good point. — ©2025 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times
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