[Inside Chodong] How to Read in the Age of AI

While the digital revolution has enabled humanity to generate more wealth and profit, it has come at the cost of losing the asset of concentration. Today, the average American spends 3 hours and 15 minutes a day looking at screens such as smartphones, touching their phones 2,617 times (from the book Stolen Focus). The book 8-Second Human even points out that the average attention span of modern people is just 8 seconds.

In times like these, the value of the very act of reading shines even brighter. Reading is undoubtedly a highly efficient tool for gaining diachronic understanding and insight into issues. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has designated this year as the "Year of Books for the 40s and 50s." It is also meaningful in its own way that a former president took it upon himself to become a bookstore keeper and opened a bookstore.

However, it is clear that reading is not the only antidote to heal the "popcorn brain" that only responds to short and stimulating content. Reading is mostly medicine, but sometimes it can be a poison more harmful than anything else.

"A person who has read only one book is more dangerous than a person who has not read a single book," said the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas. He always warned that a person who has read only one book is vulnerable to stubbornness, arrogance, and prejudice. One book is much more likely to drive a person toward dogmatism and dichotomy rather than enlightenment. One should not be complacent just because they are a prolific reader. A prolific reader who falls into black-and-white thinking and selective reading is merely an ideologue who fuels confirmation bias in the midst of factional logic.

The risk that the act of reading something could actually have harmful effects grows even greater in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). On the 11th of last month, Ireland's Irish Times apologized to readers after unknowingly publishing an article written by AI. Manipulated images and videos shock people even more than text alone. Last week, a fake photo of a large explosion at the U.S. Department of Defense building spread mainly on social media, causing confusion including a drop in the stock market. Steven Brill, CEO of NewsGuard, a U.S. news reliability evaluation organization, said, "It is becoming increasingly difficult for consumers to distinguish between trustworthy news and untrustworthy news."

AI is dramatically increasing both the quality and quantity of fake news and fake content. Reading or reading extensively is insufficient as a solution. No matter how prolific a reader is, they cannot keep up with the prolific output of AI. Perhaps the attitude recommended in this era is not reading itself but "critical thinking." Reading without criticism is as harmful as a YouTube addict who shouts, "Only YouTube is the truth."

In fact, it is necessary to view all information circulating on the internet without sources with a skeptical eye. Throwing away smartphones, laptops, and books just because you don’t want to be deceived by fake news and fake information is neither realistic nor desirable. Simply doubting the source and doing a few searches for cross-verification is enough. In the flood of information and content pouring in like a tidal wave, critical thinking is the cheapest and most effective way to protect oneself.