Published 7:00 am Sunday, August 30, 2026
We would seem to be living in uncertain times. Artificial intelligence has even its inventors uneasy, and the rest of us wringing our hands over what it is going to mean for our future and that of our children and grandchildren.
The many ads popping up on the internet are enough to make clear that one of its most profound casualties is truth. Scammers proficient with the tools of AI can easily replicate individual voices, manipulate the likenesses of the famous and not so famous, all with convincing clarity.
Many of us have gotten quite comfortable asking questions of Google and other search engines when we wish to know something or when we wish to obtain suggestions on something that interests us, be it a great vacation spot, a good movie, or a book we are sure to enjoy.
I am a retired university English professor, and I find myself often consulting one of the search engines for a book suggestion based on a book or an author whose work I particularly enjoy. And what I have discovered is something I think worth sharing.
The book suggestions that are offered up on these sites are sometimes good ones. At other times I find I don’t like the suggested book at all. The experience has brought me to a couple of conclusions about the AI search experience.
First of all, its “one size fits all” response reinforces something I told my writing students for years: “Know thy audience. . . .Write with a particular audience in mind.” AI-generated responses are not doing that. OK in fairness, AI will most often ask me to refine my request, place some additional qualifiers on it. That helps. . .but not as often as one might think.
This whole AI-aided assistance in locating my next enjoyable book reminds me of exactly why even my attempts to refine my request fail to generate a consistent bevy of books I am sure to enjoy. My frequent disappointment with the AI response reminds me of a book about Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” written several decades ago by a Stanford University professor. He was writing about the ending of Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath’s Tale” in which a knight goes off on a quest to learn what it is that women most desire. After a year on this quest, he comes back without having discovered a clear-cut answer, and the tale ends somewhat ambiguously, leading the Stanford professor to write what I believe is an important conclusion for that tale and for us: “… most of the time, we don’t know what we want.”
And therein lies the rub. Do we always know what we want? Do we even know the right questions to ask? Is artificial intelligence really able to get inside my “intelligence”? Who knows what the future holds. But right now I have no reason to think AI is going to supply me with that perfect “next read.”
Vicky Weiss lives in Ashland.
