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.
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 endeavor.
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 compar