Screens, AI, and Humans

There are at least three crucial differences between texts written by humans and AI. First, because AI creates texts based on statistical connections between words, there are no human emotions, motivations, or thoughts behind such texts. Second, since AI has no human understanding of truth and lies, it sometimes lies even more convincingly than humans. Finally, texts based on statistical occurrences of words cannot produce textual innovations similar to those of the human mind.

What does all this mean for writers? What do we lose when we no longer assume that the ability to express our thoughts and feelings in writing is crucial to the human condition? And what do we gain by using AI to help us write? We also need to think about how AI will affect us as readers. What do we lose when we rely on AI-generated book summaries and interpretations instead of reading the books themselves? How do digital screen technologies combined with artificial intelligence change our ability to read and be changed by poetry and all kinds of long, narrative texts? And what role does the printed book play in all of this?