Reading in the Age of AI: Tools Can Turn Pages for You, But They Cannot Replace Knowing Yourself ai-tool-reading-mind-en

 When AI can summarize One Hundred Years of Solitude in three seconds, when large language models can generate perfectly formatted book notes for any work, a question grows sharper by the day: do we still need to read for ourselves? If machines can "read" on our behalf, why should we still turn pages word by word?

Hainan Hui has a song called "How to Love Artificial Intelligence," whose lyrics pose a thought-provoking question: "People used to say 'a' and 'i' spelled love; now people say 'A' and 'I' spell the future. How should we love AI — as a beast of burden, or as a parent?" (read the original article). This question lands with particular force in the context of reading. Do you treat AI as your reading "beast of burden" — letting it extract key points and generate summaries while you simply reap the benefits? Or do you treat it as a reading "parent" — uncritically accepting its interpretations and surrendering your own judgment and thought? In my view, neither extreme is right. The real answer lies in an ancient phrase: "realizing today's truth makes yesterday's conviction false."

Tao Yuanming wrote in his rhapsody "The Return": "I have awakened to the irredeemable past, yet I know the future can still be pursued. I have not strayed far from the path; I feel that what is right today was wrong yesterday." This reclusive poet, standing at a crossroads, chose to listen to his inner voice — he recognized that the official career he had chased was not the life he truly wanted. This courage to "realize today's truth" is precisely the quality we most urgently need to preserve in the age of AI reading. AI can tell you what a book "says," but it can never tell you what that book "means to you." Because "meaning" has never been something objectively existing — it is born in the moment of collision between reader and text, between the words and your own lived experience. That collision is something AI cannot substitute.

I once tried letting AI read a thick historical work for me. The summary it produced was precise, comprehensive, and impeccably structured — like a perfect set of class notes. But after reading it, I felt something was missing. It was only when I opened the book myself and read a passage in the preface about an old tree at the author's village entrance that I suddenly recalled the parasol tree cut down in front of my childhood home. In that instant, the book formed a connection with my life. A connection no machine can ever establish on my behalf.

So the right posture for reading in the AI age is neither to reject tools nor to be tamed by them. Rather, be like a clear-eyed traveler: the map keeps you from getting lost, but the scenery along the way and the stirrings within your heart must ultimately be experienced step by step, on your own. Let AI be your "beast of burden" — help you search for materials, trace threads, and expand background knowledge. But never let it become your "parent" — thinking for you, feeling for you, drawing conclusions for you.

Tao Yuanming said, "I have not strayed far from the path." And when it comes to reading, we haven't gone too far either. We still have the chance to redefine our relationship with books, with knowledge, and with AI. In an age where information is available at a fingertip, the truly scarce resource is not knowledge itself but the ability to "know yourself." The value of a good book has never been just about what it says — it is about what it awakens within you. And the inner self, no matter how powerful AI becomes, is something it can never open on your behalf.

The next time you read, perhaps ask yourself: am I turning this page, or is the machine turning it for me? Is this insight mine, or did AI generate it for me? If the answer is the latter, then maybe it's time to put down the phone, pick up the book, and quietly read a page for yourself — even if it's just one page.