The written word is too important to risk an AI takeover of it

livemint.com:

In his book Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond explains why the transition from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle to settled farming was such a major shift in the human story. Once humans learnt to farm, they could put down roots, both literally and metaphorically.

Once they were able to grow food instead of having to forage for it, they were forced to organize themselves better, develop specialized tools and skills to use them, and learn to rely on fellow humans. As these agricultural communities grew, people began to differentiate themselves by the skills they had and roles they performed, forming guilds and ‘caste’ groups based on these.

This gave rise to the complex modern society that we inhabit. But it was not until the invention of writing that humankind was able to transform itself into a civilization.

While trade-based guilds implemented apprenticeships that were designed to pass skill-sets down from one generation to another, writing allowed information that resided only in the memories of those who shared it to be given permanence, so that anyone with access to this knowledge—from mundane administrative records to epic cultural narratives—could disseminate it much more efficiently. In her book The Greatest Invention, Silvia Ferrara refers to writing as “… sound made visible and tangible." It is, she argues, a means to interact with the senses that, while not an innate human faculty, remains essentially human.

This use of symbols etched or inked on a surface in order to represent information that until then had only been described through language and actions extended human capabilities in unprecedented ways. It allowed each individual human experience to enrich the ‘hive mind’ of humanity with recorded