AI Reading for You? Don’t Be Ridiculous!

AI tools may seem efficient for reading, but they can’t replace deep learning. True understanding requires focus, thought, and active engagement with the material.

Recently, I’ve noticed a particularly interesting phenomenon:

Many people have started using an approach to “reading” that seems efficient at first glance but is actually quite superficial.

How do they read?

They casually grab an e-book or PDF of a book and directly feed it to AI.

With a simple command like “Summarize it for me,” they then feel justified in thinking they’ve finished reading the book.

While this method saves time, it is actually a misunderstanding of the essence of reading. To put it bluntly, it’s digging a hole for oneself.

Honestly, I’ve done something similar.

At one point, to keep up with my progress and understand the key points of a book, I used AI to generate a summary.

At the time, I was quite proud, thinking I was super efficient, saving time, and working at full speed.

But later, I realized that those books I “read” quickly with AI left almost no useful information in my mind. In fact, I even started forgetting the titles of some of them.

In contrast, the books I really took the time to read — taking notes, discussing with friends, and even writing several thousand words about them — are still vivid in my memory today.