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 A.I. 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 firsthand just how prevalent A.I. 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 A.I. hiding in plain sight, and to find out what life would be like without it. I would spend two days as the No A.I. 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 A.I., 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 A.I.
48 Hours Without A.I. https://t.co/cgBiUKr75a via @NYTimes
— bill rice (@ricebilldc) October 28, 2025