So might AI, the technology of the moment, change the way we interact with books? To test this we would need both an AI with a memory large enough to hold a book, and an author who knows their own book well enough to judge the AIs results (View Highlight)
Every author knows, and dreads, what most people want AI to do with books - summarize them. They want to distill down pages of thoughtful prose, carefully considered language, and specific phrases into a few pithy points. So, can AI do this? Yes. And surprisingly well. Further, it has enough “sense” of context that you can ask for expansions - tell me the examples and research the book gives to support each point. And it does that, too. (View Highlight)
But does it “know” what it is reading? Most of my readers probably realize that AI does a very good job of faking understanding. In fact, it does such a good job that there is substantial debate among researchers over whether AI has developed a generalized sense of the meaning of human language or whether that is an illusion (View Highlight)
In general, this isn’t bad… but it also isn’t great. Nothing is particularly wrong with the advice, but it also not deeply insightful (View Highlight)
these experiments, I have come to believe how we relate to books is likely to change as a result of AI. (View Highlight)
With more accurate, detailed access to human knowledge provided by these larger context windows, AIs will begin to change how we understand and relate to our own written heritage in massive ways (View Highlight)
