What is happening to reading in the age of AI? This is the subject of a June article in The Atlantic by Joshua Rothman. He examines the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on reading and writing skills. In particular, he looks at the changes currently occurring to reading. You may think reading is a mundane activity, relatively unchanged since the invention of the printing press. However, you would be profoundly mistaken.

To be sure, the traditional printed book is definitely not going obsolete. People still enjoy the published copy. However, we all recognise that in this era of digitisation, books are increasingly available online.

The rise of fully digitised books is an alternative to buying the printed copy, especially if the book has long been out of print, Audiobooks are a booming sector, and internet users like myself regard their mobile devices as portable libraries. The classics of literature are hardly going out of style; Penguin Publishers, for instance, still maintains a strong and diverse collection of printed classics.

Nevertheless, there has been a decline in the sales of printed books. This is understandable, given the availability of information via digital media. Hey, I read books online, if they are available. Rather than shelling out thirty or forty dollars for a paperback, I would much prefer reading the book for free online – or buy a cheap secondhand copy.

There is no need to panic regarding the cultural shift to digital media. No, books are not going to disappear any time soon.

There is undoubtedly a shift taking place in reading and writing. We had the Gutenberg era – where the published book or magazine media dominated our consumption of information. We are moving into the Zuckerberg era, where digitisation and social media are the dominant forms of information distribution.

The literary classics – what we classify as the great works of our cultural canon – are freely available and accessible online. Does this make them part and parcel of the digital world? No, they are not. Why is that? The way we read them, digitised on the internet, is not what makes them classics. The way these books were conceived, constructed, published and distributed were part of the nondigital world.

What makes a book a classic? Its universal themes, the longevity of the topics it addresses, its relevance for contemporary times, and its ability to withstand the test of time. One such publication that is considered a classic today is Hannah Arendt’s 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Arendt, a German born American philosopher and scholar, covered the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. The latter had been living in Argentina since the conclusion of the Second World War. Kidnapped by Mossad agents, Eichmann was taken to Jerusalem where he was put on trial for his role in the genocide of European Jews.

Eichmann was found guilty of crimes against humanity, and executed by hanging in 1962. Arendt’s serialised reporting and analysis of the Eichmann trial was compiled into book form and published in 1963.

What is especially unique about this book? Arendt, examining Eichmann’s defence in court, concluded that for crimes such as the Holocaust to occur, it is necessary that bureaucratic officials such as Eichmann obey orders and follow through without question. Arendt devised the concept of the banality of evil; Eichmann, at least according to his own account of his wartime activities, was a functionary in a gigantic killing machine. All he did was implement the instructions given to him from on high.

The execution of evil, according to Arendt’s book, does not require a colour, or an identity. The functionaries, the faceless nonentities staffing the machine, were all that were needed to carry out the Holocaust.

Now, you and I know, and Arendt knew, that Eichmann was being dishonest about his past, to say the least. He was a very committed and fanatical Nazi, dedicated to the ideology of white supremacy and antisemitism. The glue that held the entire Nazi hierarchy together, and underpinned their actions, was racial supremacy. Eichmann understood full well that Nazi-occupied Europe was to be made Judenrein – Jew free.

Arendt’s observations were uniquely her own; she took copious notes, covered every aspect of the trial, and studiously observed the reactions of the foreign media. The book conveys something of the sense of occasion – if that description can be applied to a trial. Its historic and political significance were apparent to all who participated in, and observed, the trial.

AI, for all its convenience and speed in producing text, does not have intentionality. It cannot know what is going on in the minds of human observers and participants. If you ask AI about the Eichmann trial, you will receive a good answer in record time. It will cover all the important points of that event. However, AI is nothing but a stochastic parrot, fed with reams of data and text, with which it churns out answers according to a probabilistic algorithm.

AI’s large language models (LLM)s can string together linguistic constructions with astronomical speed, saving you time and money. In a matter of seconds, you will have essay-length answers to your questions. But always remember that AI is only as good as what we feed it; it relies on plagiarism, with thousands of AI workers busy in the background creating text to feed the synthetic intelligence machine.

The outcome of relying on AI will be the triumph of the mediocre; the monotonous output of AI slop. The algorithm decides what strings of words to combine, without deciding the credibility or legitimacy of the ideas contained in them.

Please use AI if you want to, but do not make major decisions or life changes based on its output. As I have written previously, in times of cascading crises and multiple emergencies, everyone turns to the classics for guidance.