“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
– Frank Herbert, Dune
While browsing a reading forum the other day, I came across a post asking how people choose their books. Being a chaos reader, I chimed in about my experiences with serendipity and the fun of simply choosing books that look remotely interesting. Some people agreed with me, but more advocated for using various forms of technology to do the choosing for them.
The most disheartening were the people who use AI to choose their books for them. They feed their very narrow list of requirements/tropes into the model and then let it tell them what comes closest to satisfying their limited interests. They argued that since AI knew every book ever published (more or less) that they would get a more complete recommendation than they ever would from a human.
To some extent, they are correct. AI probably does know every book. A librarian might know twenty books that meet your criteria, while AI might know ten thousand. (Whether it correctly understands what you’re asking for and gives you the right recommendations is up for some debate, given that AI frequently hallucinates.) This person may indeed be getting what they need from AI.
But it feels like a slippery slope.
Asking a librarian, friend, or bookseller for recommendations involves a human element. Most likely, the person giving the recommendation has actually read the book and digested the themes, plot, and characters. They understand the book in its totality and know that it’s something that will resonate with you. Or not. AI can’t understand the book in a human way. It can only parrot the reviews of others, or the language it sees in the book. It cannot parse the meaning of the text the way a human can.
It cannot tell you that Chapter 6 will make you cry, or that the last sentence will linger with you until your dying day. The bot can’t tell you that you should avoid the book because maybe it seems a little too close to that incident you had with your brother last year. It can only tell you that, yes, the book has sex, or vampires, or hot trolls, or whatever trope you’re seeking. It can’t even tell you if a human wrote the damn thing, unless something associated with the training data has marked the book as an AI creation.
The other problem with outsourcing recommendations to AI is that you’re missing out on a lot of good stuff. If you’re asking for books that meet ten specific tropes, that’s what you’re going to get. Is that really all you want to read? Are your tastes so narrow that you want a steady drip feed of only those books? Maybe you do. But if that feels limiting, it’s time to break out and find your own path.
But beyond that messy bit, the day I turn my brain over to AI to let it decide what I should be reading is the day you can just put me in the ground. Part of the fun of being alive is discovery. When you let a bot take over that fundamental joy of being human, what’s the point?
It’s feeding you a list; you’re not engaging with your own decision making and wonder. You probably hated it in school when the teacher handed you a pre-made list of books you had to read. Asking AI for a list isn’t a whole lot different. Fine, the books it recommends might at least be in your preferred genre, but you had no role in choosing them. You didn’t get the joy of stumbling on something wonderful for yourself.
Going out into the world to a bookstore or library and seeing what is out there, and judging for myself whether or not it’s something I will enjoy is fun. Hearing recommendations from friends or family who know me and my tastes and who can hone in on those books that will resonate with me is useful. Tripping over a gem at the Little Free Library in the park feels like winning the lottery!
Why would you outsource that joy to a bot?
Do you trust yourself so little to know your own tastes? Have you already outsourced so much of your brain to AI that you’re incapable of thinking for yourself? Are you seriously willing to outsource your mind and heart to a bot who knows nothing about what you really enjoy and which is only feeding you generic lists? Are you so unwilling to take a risk or venture out of your narrow comfort zone that the only choice is to make sure that a bot keeps you in your cocoon?
If so, then all I can do is to urge you to disconnect from the bots immediately. Get out into the world and take a chance on some books. Find something that looks interesting in the library and bring it home. See if you like it. If not, ask yourself (not AI) why. What would have to be different for you to love it? Did you learn anything? What was exciting about it? Use your own brain to figure out what you do and don’t like. Do the work. Don’t let AI do all your thinking and taste-making for you because that’s a joyless way to live. And it’s a surefire way to avoid ever growing as a reader, or as a human being.
AI doesn’t care if you learn or grow. Ever. But you certainly should.
