Tech writer Packy McCormick recently went viral with a post on X where he offered this “pro tip”: “You can basically read >100 books per day by asking chatgpt to summarize them for you.”

He wasn’t being serious; it was a joke meant to provoke conversation. But it resonated because it felt like something people will earnestly argue soon—if they aren’t already. Or perhaps more likely, it’ll be a slightly taboo practice that people still do—as a way to appear well-read or informed—but aren’t eager to admit that they do.

If SparkNotes appealed to teenagers and college students in my generation—a short cut to actually reading a long book—then surely “AI book summarizing” will be a live temptation going forward. It will be hard to resist a hack that promises the benefits of reading a book (“takeaways”) without the huge time cost it takes to read hundreds of pages. Life is busy, time is short, and there are way more great books out there than any of us could ever actually read. Why not “read” more books by leaning on AI’s synthesizing prowess, gaining knowledge more efficiently?

Because it’s a bad trade. It’s like swapping a feast for fast food.

Bypassing the Pleasure (and Pain) of Process

Comparative metaphors help us see the wrongheadedness of choosing an AI book summary over actually reading a book. It’s akin to:

• Blending up a 10-course Michelin-restaurant meal into a liquid drink you pound in one gulp
• Reading a Wikipedia plot summary of a Christopher Nolan movie instead of watching it in an IMAX theater
• Blazing through TV episodes at 2x speed so you can get to the ending to see what happens
• Exploring Paris on Google Maps as a substitute for strolling its streets in person (HT Alan Noble)

It’s easy to understand why technological “hacks” are appealing. They promise to decrease pain: the pain of waiting, the pain of process, the pain of limits, the pain of uncontrollable environments and unpredictable outcomes.

Lure of Shortcuts

Shortcuts have appealed to humans ever since Eden, when Adam and Eve wanted to gain God’s wisdom but not on God’s terms or timeline. Contemporary technology gives new potency to the age-old pursuit of limitlessness, optimization, and efficiency (what Jacques Ellul called “technique”).

Contemporary technology gives new potency to the age-old pursuit of limitlessness, optimization, and efficiency.

My wife is pregnant, and I’ve been thinking about God’s gracious design for pregnancy as a 9.5-month process. It’s a lengthy ordeal that no doubt feels painfully long for women. Wouldn’t it be easier if we could just get babies like we get socks on Amazon Prime? If “ordering” a baby and receiving it via one-day delivery were an option, wouldn’t that be preferable to the agonizingly long, risky process of pregnancy? Most of us would agree this would be terrible. But technologists are hard at work trying to “overcome” God’s seemingly inefficient design for baby-making. And couples who purchase a surrogate-carried baby are already practicing “technique” by brazenly defying the impossibility of bearing their own children.

Our flesh is constantly tempted by shortcuts: bypassing process to get straight to the desired results. But process matters. Get-rich-quick schemes, gambling, diet crazes, “miracle drugs,” and other shortcut temptations usually backfire.

God values and dignifies process. He models it himself. He could have snapped his fingers and created the world in one millisecond. Instead, he took seven days. Jesus’s method of discipleship (with Peter, for example), as well as his preferred manner of teaching via question-raising parables, shows he values patient process and faith over “takeaways” and instant results. Efficiency and optimized time don’t seem to be God’s highest values. Nor should they be ours.

Value of Reading Beyond Informational ‘Results’

If the chief value of reading books was only “practical takeaways” or “gained knowledge,” AI summaries could probably do the trick. But the act of reading has immense value, which we’re at risk of losing if we let AI do our reading for us. Consider just a few benefits:

• Giving our attention to a book for a long period of time helps us go deeper with and think more sharply about a particular subject, or grow in understanding about other perspectives or life experiences.
• Reading trains our critical-thinking muscles. Time spent reading is like time spent in the gym. The more we do it, the more (intellectually or physically) agile we’ll be.
• Reading helps to grow us in humility and listening. To sit still and actively track with someone else’s perspective or argument without inserting our opinion or storming off mid-conversation is a valuable practice in a world losing the ability—or willingness—to hear others.

As people of the Book, Christians have another reason to fight for reading: God revealed himself in written words. If the next generation outsources reading to AI and, in the process, loses the capacity to decipher long-form text, what will that mean for biblical literacy and spiritual formation?

If the next generation outsources reading to AI and, in the process, loses the capacity to decipher long-form text, what will that mean for biblical literacy and spiritual formation?

A meaningful devotional life requires spending time in God’s Word, not merely asking AI to summarize it for us. To be a “biblical” Christian isn’t just to have nuggets of biblical knowledge stored in our heads. It’s to be regularly immersed within the pages of Scripture, soaking it up habitually, devouring it eagerly, savoring its truths—which are sweeter than honey (Ps. 119:103).

AI might be able to engage our heads by synthesizing and summarizing biblical ideas for us. But it can’t engage our hearts by getting us to love God’s Word. Our affections and appetites are trained over time, in the process of soaking in the sweet riches of God’s Word. God doesn’t want to just communicate a few ideas to us in Scripture. He wants to commune with us as we give him our full and eager attention. We train our hearts and minds to experience this attentive communion with God’s Book by experiencing it with other books, as often as we can.

So ditch the AI summaries and keep reading books!