Could you do a history degree without reading anything? Or at least without reading a single book or academic article?

Maybe. That’s one possible dystopian future for education.

I’d almost like to try it as an experiment—to run a history module in which reading is actually prohibited. Instead, students would be required to put the various books and articles from the reading list into an AI of their choice. The smart ones would probably use Google NotebookLM. It’s designed for exactly that.

Rather than reading anything, the students would then ask the AI various questions. Maybe they would ask the AI to summarise the readings. But actually, I expect most of them would skip that. Summaries are… well, they’re for people who read. The students would go straight for the answers: “Based on the readings I uploaded, what are the possible causes of the French Revolution? Can you evaluate them and tell me which is the most convincing and why.”

Next up would be the assignment. I guess if you can do education without reading, you can also do education without writing. So let’s imagine the module also requires students to produce an essay using only AI. No actual writing allowed. That would definitely be prohibited.

“Thanks for identifying the causes of the French Revolution. Can you write a 1,500 word essay, with references, setting out the argument and evidence for that.”

The future is finally here. Education has been automated.

Who Uses An Index Anyway?

The above thought experiment might sound ridiculous, flippant even. It’s a bit like the various memes of the professor using AI to write the lectures, the students using AI to write the essays, and then the professor using AI to do the marking. The whole thing just goes round and round in circles, burning energy to keep the AI models running, whilst no one learns anything.

But I can imagine a less extreme (if still completely dystopian) version, in which actual reading and writing is no longer seen as a core component of education.

I expect that many students would look at some of the stuff I do as rather old fashioned. For example, I often still use an index if I’m looking at a book. It’s a tried and tested means of finding information quickly. I’m also really good at—get this—reading. (It’s even in my job title! “Reader in the History of Science and Technology”). Like most people in the humanities, I can read quickly with a purpose, skim over the things that don’t matter, and get the gist. A well-written introduction to an article or a book helps smooth things along.

That all might start to look like old hat. It probably already does. Why would you use an index when you can search a digital copy? And so why would you read an introduction when ChatGPT can summarise the whole book?

It makes me think of some of the old technologies of information retrieval which have faded into obsolesce. Take card catalogues. Cambridge University Library actually still has them. I don’t think Warwick does. I’ve never seen one. In any case, even I don’t go looking through a card catalogue to find a book. I just type what I’m after into the online library catalogue. It’s quicker. It’s easier.

I don’t have a sense of loss about card catalogues. But presumably some people do. Maybe it will be the same with AI. What I feel as a loss will start to seem rather quaint.

Why would you read when AI can do it for you?