I really don’t like the narrative that we have 18 months until AI leaves us in the dust. Derek Thompson, co-author of Abundance with Ezra Klein, has found himself in the same place. Instead of thinking we’re doomed by the machines, he thinks the real crisis will be people voluntarily degrading their own cognitive abilities by outsourcing their minds and letting their reading and writing skills devolve. In his recent post, The End of Thinking, he writes:

One might imagine, then, that the potential arrival of all-knowing AI would serve as a galvanizing threat, like a Sputnik moment for our collective capacity to think deeply. Instead, I fear we’re preparing for the alleged arrival of a super-brain by lobotomizing ourselves, slinking away into a state of incuriosity marked by less reading, less writing, and less thinking.

It’s a scary thought. Literacy is a cornerstone of how we summoned the modern world into existence. It lets us transmit ideas across space and time in ways far beyond what oral traditions could do. To let it atrophy now, in the age of AI, would be to fulfill Neil Postman’s warning in Amusing Ourselves to Death — handing over our best selves not to tyrants, but to distraction. Keeping it alive must be one of our highest priorities.