Is deep reading, probing texts for meaning, over? Is AI destroying writing and thinking?

Probing a text can be enjoyable but also tiring, even borderline painful. That’s good. Exhausting our mental faculties, such as through deep reading or effortful writing, is what makes them more potent. Physical exercise works the same way. AI, by contrast, promises knowledge without effort, just as many people see in GLP-1 drugs the possibility of weight loss without willpower. Although both have legitimate uses, their widespread adoption has diminished our capacity to appreciate, let alone endure, the sustained and challenging work required to flourish beyond the level of simple appearance. Only through difficulty do we improve our powers of thought and perception, which we carry with us in every endeavor. This is the true source of the humanities’ relevance.

Camus’s great realization was that, in a meaningless world, we create our own meaning and quality through willed struggle—a lesson that AI threatens to obscure but the humanities are uniquely poised to teach. Sisyphus is assigned to roll his rock for eternity, Camus writes. Yet he can still be happy so long as, each time he comes to the bottom of the hill, he’s the one who chooses to turn around and rise back up.

-Thomas Chattterton Williams in The Atlantic