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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% 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 endeavor.

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