I agree completely, but would extend your analysis to rejecting the use of chatbots, etc. as substitutes for individuals engaging with *any* texts. As a philosophy professor, I would make the same argument you did that there is no substitute for someone reading primary philosophical texts themselves without the mind- and skill-crippling "aid" of chatbots, SparkNotes summaries, and so on. All of those short-circuit intellectual independence and learning that can only be done by grappling with people's difficult, nuanced ideas.
Good piece. Incredible how anemic and lifeless is the AI version. Imagine the AI summary of Samuel Beckett: “The title character of Godot does not arrive. No reason is given. The tramps must wait.”
I totally agree with this post, Liza. I grew up in a village with no public library (1957-70). The only library was in my village school with very few books and there was a section for adults, which kids weren’t allowed to access. I lied and said the books were for my mother (who didn’t read for pleasure: she didn’t have time!) I read every book I could, including Anna Karenina and War and Peace, from age 11 onwards. Did I understand everything? No. But I was enraptured and learning to read, increasing my vocabulary (writing down new words and looking them up) and becoming a writer, slowly but surely. Wasn’t I lucky? Of course, no one was testing my comprehension! I had the chance to acquire the skills on my own. As a thirty-two year teacher, I believe in providing access to all levels of reading material and to encouraging students to read above their “level.” It’s how we become educated!
This piece should be published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the New York Times and the Washington Post and read by K-12 and college students across the country! An absolutely stupendous piece, Liza! MZ Prezioso was being way too generous when she said that AI-adapted texts would simply “affect” student’s love of literature, it will eliminate it altogether. I don’t know if it’s just me, but this also strikes me as classist, racist and ableist. It to me seems like they are implying poor, black, Hispanic, Asian, Indigenous, Arab, immigrant, foreign, and disabled students are too stupid to understand the full text of great works of literature, so we have to dumb it down for them. I don’t know, it just seems like the soft bigotry of low expectations to me.
Personally, I think poor, black, Hispanic, Asian, Indigenous, Arab, immigrant, foreign, and disabled students are just as capable as anyone else of understanding the profound universal moral messages in great works of literature. There should be local, state and federal laws limiting the use of AI. Is AI altogether a bad thing? No, of course not. But we shouldn’t adopt it wholesale, as Peter Biles talked about in your interview with him. Also, great works of literature aren’t supposed to be easy! That’s the fun of it, by George! The intellectual reward you get from standing in the shoes of the characters and learning to empathize with them and the profound emotional experience that comes with that, introducing you to new ways of thinking and seeing the world and developing critical thinking skills.
The National Council of English Teachers and all comparable organizations need to abolished. This decision by education officials also is Exhibit A as to why public education needs to be totally reimagined in this country! If you seriously believe that a robot can replace William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Miguel de Cervantes, Jules Archer, Alexandre Dumas, Arthur Conan Doyle, Victor Hugo, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, Lewis Carroll, Washington Irving, Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, Theodor Giesel, Beverly Clearly, Eric Carle, Norman Birdwell, Jan and Stan Bernstein, Margret and H.A. Rey, Richard Scarry, John Grisham, Patricia Cornwall, Danielle Steel, Sidney Sheldon, Tom Clancy, Judith Krantz, R.L. Stine, Isaac Asimov, and Leon Uris then as Steven Tyler would say “dream on!”
High school killed literature for me, even before AI. The only things I remember learning are The Ancient Mariner, and the lyrics to a Simon and Garfunkel song. I didn't really understand them, but was attracted to Coleridge's use of language - memorable lines like "the ice was here, the ice was there, the ice was all around" etc. It was only after I finished high school that I became interested in understanding literary works, and eventually ended up completing a BA in English Lit. I suspect that AI is just the latest iteration of inflicting mediocrity on students instead of reading great literature. But maybe I'm unusual as I can go into ecstasies reading the language use of authors like Joyce, Faulkner and Proust. I take your point about AI adaptive texts, but I don't think your example is a good one as both the ChatGPT prompt and Morson's example are translations from the original Russian, and both therefore lack the poetry and the nuance possible in something originally written in English. To me there's not a big enough difference between the two to make the point clear. Here's another random comparison that I think better illustrates the difference - the opening lines from Ulysses compared to a simplified ChatGPT version. Original: "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently-behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: Introibo ad altare Dei. " ChatGPT: "A tall, round man named Buck Mulligan came up the stairs, holding a bowl of shaving foam with a mirror and razor on top of it. He wore a loose yellow bathrobe that the light morning breeze blew behind him. He lifted the bowl and said: I will go to the altar of God."
Respectfully, I think you’re looking at this from too narrow a perspective. I doubt this is being used in AP lit classes. This is for remedial English, which is the vast majority of high school classes. Even college-educated (if you can call business majors college-educated) people struggle to read basic prose. I once got points deducted on a performance review because I wrote emails in complete sentences. Instead I was encouraged to use bullet points, or, whenever possible, to speak on the phone, because most senior managers aren’t capable of comprehending an actual written sentence. These people are in no danger of even pronouncing the title of Anna Karenina correctly, and personally, I’m in favor of helping them read better, not least because the time I spend explaining a simple subject-verb-object declarative sentence consisting entirely of monosyllabic words is time I could better spend reading something like Anna Karenina (which I did, in fact, read at work, lol). For people who are reading at a higher level, the books are still out there, either as part of an AP reading list or as self-directed study.
You said it yourself. "The vast majority of high school classes." Therein lies the problem. The vast majority of students—even college-educated students—will never read literature.
Not entirely true. I know plenty of students who read literature, but my subject is Literature so it is not entirely a random sample. I do also know of students that read literature but don't join my courses.
The problem is not AI. The problem is not English Departments. You are repeatedly barking up the wrong trees. The problems are parents who push their kids away from Literature as a subject to study because they see no career at the end of it: “study Business or IT!” they say, and that being “well read” or “a man of letters” is simply no longer seen as something to admire for males.
This is really more of a problem, and seems to be generational. Every male in my department reads, yet my classes are almost completely female students. In the past four years I have had two male students, and every reader I know of (and discuss books with) is female. It appears to me that the focus on STEM courses, and weird right-wing ideas of (toxic) masculinity from right-wing nutters like Andrew Tate, are the problems.
An education bill needs to be enacted that mandates that all university and college courses need to have an AI version and a non AI version. Sort of like deodorants need to have an aluminum parabellums version and non aluminum parabellums version. Ai is toxic to creativity and to an unbiased understanding of creativity. People need to have a choice. Also it would be great if a university professor like Joyce Carol Oates at Princeton would weigh in on the use of AI in teaching literary classics.
Thank you so much for defending literature. Truly, it’s been under attack for decades from the fools who insist on teaching it from a formal/intellectual/historical perspective and AI will only make it worse.
Keeping it simple: what the hell can we do about it?
If history is continuously being rewritten by the powerful, and now AI, and these rewritten truths are taken as truth and then defended, eventually, maybe now, we lose any creative autonomy we think we have left. AI is the perfect self medicating delusion drug.
Literature and writing: I almost never see typos on Substack, we should see them, we're human, at the moment...
please don't subscribe, unless you spell very badly...
First: I am Head of an English department. I have yet to meet any teacher, anywhere, in my own department or just other teachers or lecturers I know, using AI to simplify texts. There is really no need to because ... second: simplified versions of novels have been around since forever, and are mainly used in Second Language classes to accommodate limited vocabulary. Plus ... third: texts used in English Language classrooms are generally supplied in the course book.
This whole thing looks like an imaginary storm in a teacup.
AI "accessible" literature will be like never taking the training wheels off of a bicycle. The child will think they know how to engage with literature. They will be wrong. What will be lost is the development of a robust useful imagination and so sense of Wonder. This will impoverish society.
I agree completely, but would extend your analysis to rejecting the use of chatbots, etc. as substitutes for individuals engaging with *any* texts. As a philosophy professor, I would make the same argument you did that there is no substitute for someone reading primary philosophical texts themselves without the mind- and skill-crippling "aid" of chatbots, SparkNotes summaries, and so on. All of those short-circuit intellectual independence and learning that can only be done by grappling with people's difficult, nuanced ideas.
Fantastic. Eloquent. Incisive.
Good piece. Incredible how anemic and lifeless is the AI version. Imagine the AI summary of Samuel Beckett: “The title character of Godot does not arrive. No reason is given. The tramps must wait.”
Oh the AI summary is so much better! S.B. is a boring chore...
I totally agree with this post, Liza. I grew up in a village with no public library (1957-70). The only library was in my village school with very few books and there was a section for adults, which kids weren’t allowed to access. I lied and said the books were for my mother (who didn’t read for pleasure: she didn’t have time!) I read every book I could, including Anna Karenina and War and Peace, from age 11 onwards. Did I understand everything? No. But I was enraptured and learning to read, increasing my vocabulary (writing down new words and looking them up) and becoming a writer, slowly but surely. Wasn’t I lucky? Of course, no one was testing my comprehension! I had the chance to acquire the skills on my own. As a thirty-two year teacher, I believe in providing access to all levels of reading material and to encouraging students to read above their “level.” It’s how we become educated!
I am not Tolstoy either FWIW
This piece should be published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the New York Times and the Washington Post and read by K-12 and college students across the country! An absolutely stupendous piece, Liza! MZ Prezioso was being way too generous when she said that AI-adapted texts would simply “affect” student’s love of literature, it will eliminate it altogether. I don’t know if it’s just me, but this also strikes me as classist, racist and ableist. It to me seems like they are implying poor, black, Hispanic, Asian, Indigenous, Arab, immigrant, foreign, and disabled students are too stupid to understand the full text of great works of literature, so we have to dumb it down for them. I don’t know, it just seems like the soft bigotry of low expectations to me.
Personally, I think poor, black, Hispanic, Asian, Indigenous, Arab, immigrant, foreign, and disabled students are just as capable as anyone else of understanding the profound universal moral messages in great works of literature. There should be local, state and federal laws limiting the use of AI. Is AI altogether a bad thing? No, of course not. But we shouldn’t adopt it wholesale, as Peter Biles talked about in your interview with him. Also, great works of literature aren’t supposed to be easy! That’s the fun of it, by George! The intellectual reward you get from standing in the shoes of the characters and learning to empathize with them and the profound emotional experience that comes with that, introducing you to new ways of thinking and seeing the world and developing critical thinking skills.
The National Council of English Teachers and all comparable organizations need to abolished. This decision by education officials also is Exhibit A as to why public education needs to be totally reimagined in this country! If you seriously believe that a robot can replace William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Miguel de Cervantes, Jules Archer, Alexandre Dumas, Arthur Conan Doyle, Victor Hugo, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, Lewis Carroll, Washington Irving, Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, Theodor Giesel, Beverly Clearly, Eric Carle, Norman Birdwell, Jan and Stan Bernstein, Margret and H.A. Rey, Richard Scarry, John Grisham, Patricia Cornwall, Danielle Steel, Sidney Sheldon, Tom Clancy, Judith Krantz, R.L. Stine, Isaac Asimov, and Leon Uris then as Steven Tyler would say “dream on!”
High school killed literature for me, even before AI. The only things I remember learning are The Ancient Mariner, and the lyrics to a Simon and Garfunkel song. I didn't really understand them, but was attracted to Coleridge's use of language - memorable lines like "the ice was here, the ice was there, the ice was all around" etc. It was only after I finished high school that I became interested in understanding literary works, and eventually ended up completing a BA in English Lit. I suspect that AI is just the latest iteration of inflicting mediocrity on students instead of reading great literature. But maybe I'm unusual as I can go into ecstasies reading the language use of authors like Joyce, Faulkner and Proust. I take your point about AI adaptive texts, but I don't think your example is a good one as both the ChatGPT prompt and Morson's example are translations from the original Russian, and both therefore lack the poetry and the nuance possible in something originally written in English. To me there's not a big enough difference between the two to make the point clear. Here's another random comparison that I think better illustrates the difference - the opening lines from Ulysses compared to a simplified ChatGPT version. Original: "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently-behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: Introibo ad altare Dei. " ChatGPT: "A tall, round man named Buck Mulligan came up the stairs, holding a bowl of shaving foam with a mirror and razor on top of it. He wore a loose yellow bathrobe that the light morning breeze blew behind him. He lifted the bowl and said: I will go to the altar of God."
Respectfully, I think you’re looking at this from too narrow a perspective. I doubt this is being used in AP lit classes. This is for remedial English, which is the vast majority of high school classes. Even college-educated (if you can call business majors college-educated) people struggle to read basic prose. I once got points deducted on a performance review because I wrote emails in complete sentences. Instead I was encouraged to use bullet points, or, whenever possible, to speak on the phone, because most senior managers aren’t capable of comprehending an actual written sentence. These people are in no danger of even pronouncing the title of Anna Karenina correctly, and personally, I’m in favor of helping them read better, not least because the time I spend explaining a simple subject-verb-object declarative sentence consisting entirely of monosyllabic words is time I could better spend reading something like Anna Karenina (which I did, in fact, read at work, lol). For people who are reading at a higher level, the books are still out there, either as part of an AP reading list or as self-directed study.
You said it yourself. "The vast majority of high school classes." Therein lies the problem. The vast majority of students—even college-educated students—will never read literature.
Not entirely true. I know plenty of students who read literature, but my subject is Literature so it is not entirely a random sample. I do also know of students that read literature but don't join my courses.
The problem is not AI. The problem is not English Departments. You are repeatedly barking up the wrong trees. The problems are parents who push their kids away from Literature as a subject to study because they see no career at the end of it: “study Business or IT!” they say, and that being “well read” or “a man of letters” is simply no longer seen as something to admire for males.
This is really more of a problem, and seems to be generational. Every male in my department reads, yet my classes are almost completely female students. In the past four years I have had two male students, and every reader I know of (and discuss books with) is female. It appears to me that the focus on STEM courses, and weird right-wing ideas of (toxic) masculinity from right-wing nutters like Andrew Tate, are the problems.
An education bill needs to be enacted that mandates that all university and college courses need to have an AI version and a non AI version. Sort of like deodorants need to have an aluminum parabellums version and non aluminum parabellums version. Ai is toxic to creativity and to an unbiased understanding of creativity. People need to have a choice. Also it would be great if a university professor like Joyce Carol Oates at Princeton would weigh in on the use of AI in teaching literary classics.
Thank you so much for defending literature. Truly, it’s been under attack for decades from the fools who insist on teaching it from a formal/intellectual/historical perspective and AI will only make it worse.
Keeping it simple: what the hell can we do about it?
If history is continuously being rewritten by the powerful, and now AI, and these rewritten truths are taken as truth and then defended, eventually, maybe now, we lose any creative autonomy we think we have left. AI is the perfect self medicating delusion drug.
Literature and writing: I almost never see typos on Substack, we should see them, we're human, at the moment...
please don't subscribe, unless you spell very badly...
Thanks Richie, fully agree. If we flatten the language of great literature, we don’t make it more accessible—we make it forgettable.
Well written...I agree...if you want to know what the author is saying, read their text, it is the source.
The how, the why, learn through the work what it means to be different, the same...
First: I am Head of an English department. I have yet to meet any teacher, anywhere, in my own department or just other teachers or lecturers I know, using AI to simplify texts. There is really no need to because ... second: simplified versions of novels have been around since forever, and are mainly used in Second Language classes to accommodate limited vocabulary. Plus ... third: texts used in English Language classrooms are generally supplied in the course book.
This whole thing looks like an imaginary storm in a teacup.
AI "accessible" literature will be like never taking the training wheels off of a bicycle. The child will think they know how to engage with literature. They will be wrong. What will be lost is the development of a robust useful imagination and so sense of Wonder. This will impoverish society.
This is probably your best article of the year.