Publishing, AI, and the Decline of Literacy in America–And What to Do About It

By Meaghan Morelli, Memoirist, writer, speaker. Forthcoming book, WATCH ME: A memoir of stalking and survival, available 2027.

We’ve written here on this blog previously about the convergence of AI and the business of publishing. And it is important to state at the outset that First Flight Books is committed to publishing works written by actual human beings. It is at the core of our ethos.

But a new article from Wired Magazine outlines ways in which AI is still quietly seeping into the broader publishing ecosystem. And it has me thinking about what this means in the broader context of individual, human expression. And what, exactly, I think is on the line here.

The piece, originally published on October 9, relies on over two dozen publishing insiders who spoke out anonymously about the AI infiltration, citing AI usage for everything from cover copy and cover art, to AI-generated manuscripts being shopped without disclosure of the use of the technology.

For those with a deep love of creativity and the belief that it is a unique and essential part of our humanity, this news is disturbing. And it comes at the same time that data and human experts are telling us that we are in the midst of a full-blown literacy crisis in the United States. 

In a piece for The Atlantic, published in August of this year, Rose Horowitch writes, “According to the National Endowment for the Arts, which conducts the most comprehensive survey of the nation’s reading habits, fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022.”

By comparison, she offers, “last year, 57 percent of Americans placed a bet,” fueled largely by online gambling and so-called “betting markets.”

And if that’s not bleak enough, she also outlines a 2024 national test in which only “35 percent of high-school seniors were ‘proficient’ at skills such as analyzing complex fictional themes and evaluating the effectiveness of an author’s argument.”

I would argue that the trends these data point toward does not augur well for the future of a civilized society able to contend with nuance and the critical thinking that is fundamental to tackling the national and global challenges societies face.

So, do we do nothing? Or do we take a more active stance to fight against the indifference that inevitably leads to entropy?

These questions seem deceivingly simple in their presentation. However, the ubiquity with which AI is being forced upon society at alarming rates in basically every facet of our lives makes answering these questions with deeper thought and critical thinking essential.

What kind of world do we want to inhabit? One where the very tastes, opinions, interests, flights of fancy, grasp of complex concepts, and our ability to relate to one another on deep and lasting levels is flattened by algorithmic regurgitations of watered down versions of ideas that have come before and been manipulated and altered in such a way that they serve someone else’s bottom line?

Or do we want to thrive in a world that is a brighter, more tangled garden of authentic human ideas, experiences, and expressions?

I’m resisting the urge to make comparisons to dystopian visions conjured by the writings of Orwell, because that in itself has become a kind of overused shorthand, and that is a dangerous precipice where ideas lose their impact.

Rather, I’d like to invoke here the words of another, who reflects without the dark satire of Orwell, on the act and importance of writing:

“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear,” - Joan Didion, Let Me Tell You What I Mean.

So let me come to the point, then: 

What I am looking at is a culture allowing the joys, benefits, and challenges of literacy, authorship, and authentic voice slip through their fingers at terrifying speed. That’s what I see. What I think it means is that we are losing the savage, earnest, life-altering beauty of deep and honest expression to the promise of “ease” and “efficiency.” 

What I want—what I desperately want—is for us to reclaim our minds and our words, and therefore our uniqueness in all its confusing complexity. I want us to stop being willingly loaded onto the conveyor belt of algorithms that govern what we watch, what we read (or, increasingly, don’t read), how we look, how we behave, and—ultimately—what we think.

What I fear is that we won’t do it in time. Not unless we take that active stance, the one that forces us to participate, to reject that “ease” and “efficiency” are the Holy Grail in and of themselves.

Gardens require attention and effort. Our thinking too requires tending, attention, and effort perhaps now more than ever. Because, in the words of another author, Kurt Vonnegut, “If you can’t write clearly, you probably don’t think nearly as well as you think you do.”

So the light at the end of the AI-darkened tunnel for all of us, then, is to continue to write. Even when it feels difficult. Even when we’re not sure anyone will ever read it. Because writing is an end in itself. It helps us make sense of what is happening around us, how we feel, and what we’d like to do about it.

Write for yourself, for your own clarity. Write without “just checking” with ChatGPT, just as we have done throughout all of human history until a few years ago. 

You don’t need it. I promise you don’t. Don’t give it your ideas to repurpose for someone else to claim as their own. Don’t take the regurgitated outputs of those platforms and decide that they are somehow “better” or “more compelling” than that tangled garden in your own mind.

Because that garden is yours. And the world needs to walk through its untamed beauty, now more than ever.