AI is making reading books feel obsolete – and students have a lot to lose

A perfect storm is brewing for reading.

AI arrived as both kids and adults were already spending less time reading books than they did in the not-so-distant past. A new study shows the amount of reading for pleasure that Americans are doing is down 40 per cent since the early 2000s.

As a linguist, I study how technology influences the ways people read, write and think.

This includes the impact of artificial intelligence, which is dramatically changing how people engage with books or other kinds of writing, whether it’s assigned, used for research or read for pleasure. I worry that AI is accelerating an ongoing shift in the value people place on reading as a human endeavour.

Everything but the book

AI’s writing skills have gotten plenty of attention. But researchers and teachers are only now starting to talk about AI’s ability to “read” massive datasets before churning out summaries, analyses or comparisons of books, essays and articles.

Need to read a novel for class? These days, you might get by with skimming through an AI-generated summary of the plot and key themes. This kind of possibility, which undermines people’s motivation to read on their own, prompted me to write a book about the pros and cons of letting AI do the reading for you.

Palming off the work of summarising or analysing texts is hardly new. CliffsNotes dates back...

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