The New York Times recently published an article, 48 Hours Without A.I., by A.J. Jacobs. He decided to live for 48 hours without AI or machine learning to gauge how pervasive these technologies have become in daily life. His goal was to expose “the AI hiding in plain sight” and understand what modern life would look like without it. From the moment he wakes, he finds AI embedded in nearly everything.
AI now is embedded in internet search engines and shopping sites like Amazon.
I asked ChatGPT to discuss the premise of the article, which is about how much AI already is integrated into our lives, often in ways that we are not aware of. I also asked it to discuss ways that it’s likely to be integrated into our lives in the future, and identify ways that it isn’t and probably won’t be. Here’s what it said:
- The Premise: AI Is Already Woven Into the Fabric of Daily Life
A.J. Jacobs’s stunt – “48 hours without AI” – works precisely because it’s absurd. He discovers that artificial intelligence, broadly defined to include both machine learning and generative systems, has seeped into everything from our phones to our power grids. His goal wasn’t to mock AI but to show that avoiding it has become nearly impossible.
The brilliance of the piece lies in how it shifts the reader’s awareness. We tend to think of AI as a conscious interaction – typing a prompt into ChatGPT, using DALL·E, or watching a deepfake video. Jacobs forces us to realize that AI is an invisible infrastructure, not just a gadget. It filters our email (spam detection), balances our electric grid, coordinates food supply chains, guides traffic lights, manages water resources, and even shapes the weather forecasts we check before leaving home.
In other words, AI is now a utility technology – something as fundamental as electricity or the internet. You can’t simply “opt out” of it without stepping back decades. That’s the crux of Jacobs’s realization: AI is no longer an optional layer of convenience; it’s embedded in the operating system of society.
- Where It’s Heading: Deeper, More Seamless Integration
Jacobs ends the article with unease but also realism: AI’s penetration will only deepen. The next phase won’t just be more tools, but integration so smooth we won’t notice it at all. Some likely directions:
Invisible Automation
AI will continue to migrate behind the scenes – in logistics, finance, energy, and medicine – improving efficiency without human awareness. Think smart grids adjusting power in real time, or AI-optimized traffic systems reducing congestion dynamically.
Personalized Everything
As data grows, algorithms will tailor not just ads but daily life itself – individualized education, adaptive healthcare, hyper-targeted entertainment, and even news feeds that match emotional tone or mood. The risk is that this personalization will create echo chambers and erode shared cultural experiences.
Embedded Environments
Physical spaces – homes, offices, and cities – will become ambiently intelligent. Sensors and small-scale AIs will manage heating, lighting, waste, and security automatically. We’re headed toward “background AI” – a layer of cognition embedded in the physical world, not just on screens.
Social and Emotional Interfaces
AI companions, tutors, and assistants will become more conversational and emotionally responsive. Whether that’s empowering or infantilizing will depend on design and ethics. But it’s clear that many daily interactions – customer service, education, even therapy – will involve some hybrid of human and machine.
In short, the future Jacobs glimpses is not one where AI “takes over,” but one where it becomes indistinguishable from normal functioning. It will operate quietly in the background of nearly every modern system.
- Where AI Isn’t – and Probably Won’t Be
Despite the hype, there are still zones of life resistant to AI – not just technologically, but philosophically and emotionally.
Deep Human Relationships
AI can mimic empathy, but it can’t experience it. Friendship, love, and moral judgment rely on subjective consciousness – the messy, embodied experience of being human. Machines can simulate care but not feel it. This matters most in parenting, intimate relationships, and moral decision-making.
Artistic and Existential Meaning
AI can generate paintings, novels, and music, but it lacks the lived context that gives art resonance. Human creativity is not just pattern generation – it’s self-expression under constraint, tied to identity, suffering, and hope. AI can assist or imitate, but it doesn’t create from being.
Physical Labor Requiring Dexterity or Judgment
While automation continues in warehouses and factories, AI still struggles with unstructured environments – plumbing repairs, caregiving, cooking in a crowded kitchen, surgery in unpredictable conditions. Human flexibility and sensory integration remain unmatched.
Ethics and Accountability
Even if AI systems make decisions, responsibility stays human. We hold people – not algorithms – accountable for choices involving harm, fairness, and justice. Legal and ethical systems cannot (and should not) offload moral agency to code.
The Desire for Authenticity
Paradoxically, the more AI infiltrates life, the more value people place on human touch, imperfection, and authenticity – handwritten notes, live performances, face-to-face teaching. There will always be niches – perhaps even expanding ones – for genuine human creation precisely because of AI’s ubiquity.
- The Larger Insight
Jacobs’s experiment reveals a paradox: AI has become both invisible and inescapable. Its greatest success is that we no longer notice it; its greatest danger is the same. Future societies will have to confront not whether to use AI, but how consciously to live with it – where to delegate, where to resist, and how to preserve what’s distinctly human amid pervasive automation.
