Humanity on the Page : Writing in the Age of AI

"I think about those thousands of hours spent reading—this slow accretion of experience in words, this piecemeal building of a self, book by book, in communion with those writers, living and dead, whose words captured me. Humanity on a page—theirs and mine, entwined. David Baldacci talks eloquently about growing up in the racially segregated South, and the role that books played—Twain’s novels in particular—in helping him perceive a different world out there. Literature, David likes to say, is the antidote to any individual’s limited experience. “You fill out your humanity by reading about other people’s experiences. Empathy for people, understanding, tolerance—these are sublime human attributes, and reading helps you attain that. And that’s being ripped away.” His reflections highlight how, when you ponder AI and its impact on reading and writing, each question leads to a deeper and more all-encompassing one, and finally it is impossible to address the question of what becomes of literature without addressing the larger one looming behind it: What becomes of the human being?"

read essay by Rand Richards Cooper

Humanity on the Page | Commonweal Magazine