We desperately need another ChatGPT moment outside of text generation to wake people up and let them know how quickly generative technology will impact skills beyond writing. What does it mean when we stop reading texts and instead offload that skill to AI? Adobe’s AI Assistant offers $5 a month for summarizing and querying PDFs, a feature already available with foundation models and AI-reading assistants. The focus on ChatGPT’s impact on writing has overlooked the potential of generative AI in core skills like reading.
AI Assistance and Tools
AI reading assistants could play an important role in equity and access to information. However, the uncritical adoption of AI reading tools poses an incredible risk to student’s close reading skills. Like so many different tools that use generative AI, it is found that the reading assistances were focused on speed and task completion over nurturing developing skills or honing existing ones. This isn’t to say there aren’t profoundly helpful cases for the tools beyond students who struggle with reading comprehension and language acquisition. Honestly there isn’t anyone who wouldn’t want the ability to summarize massive volumes of information with accurate and automatic summaries.
How AI Reading is Marketed to Students
Apps like Unriddle AI promises to read for a user and are overwhelming social media marketing directed toward students. What isn’t mentioned is how often an app like Unriddle misses key facts from a document. When the selling point is speed over process, nuance and accuracy are often left behind. Unchecked, the lure of frictionless reading could produce a profoundly weakened culture of surface-level ideas rather than exploring them in depth. More so, asking an AI to change the reading level of a story written for an adult audience for a middle-school grade level removes nuance, style, and distorts artistic intent. AI reading assistants can generate accurate summary of short stories, but analysing the craft of the story is a failure. Changing the reading level of a story written for an adult audience for a middle-school grade level removes nuance, style, and distorts artistic intent, making it a failure in storytelling.
Why Reading Matters
When reading is taught as a skill, students are invited into a conversation with the reader about their ideas. It just isn’t done by a custom generating summary. If students use it in place of close reading, they might not be able to properly interact with the concepts presented by the author. If an over dependence on AI reading assistants is allowed to undermine students’ ability and willingness to closely read and engage with texts, the consequences could spread generations after school for generations downstream.
Considering that generative AI technologies are now widely used, educators will need to critically assess and explain the worth of human abilities. If not, a large number of students will just accept the tools as answers and stand-ins for many of the fundamental abilities identified with learning.
