I find it hard to imagine Leonardo da Vinci or Sherlock Holmes spending so much time with summary. I suspect careful thinkers do not gain a mastery of mystery, or attention to detail, by scrolling Reddit or listening to current event podcasts or asking “AI” to summarize anything. Instead I imagine they spend their time with primary sources,... See more

Summarization technology is the ultimate device: it promises to deliver the benefits of complex thought without requiring us to do the thinking. But thinking, like fitness, is a practice that can only be developed through regular engagement with resistance. Outsource the resistance, and you lose the capacity. Let machines do your intellectual heavy... See more

Shiri Melumad, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, gave a group of 250 people a simple writing assignment: Share advice with a friend on how to lead a healthier lifestyle. To come up with tips, some were allowed to use a traditional Google search, while others could rely only on summaries of information generated... See more

Maybe this is born out of our age of convenience, in which listicle-driven reading makes us start to crave even the most complex of ideas to be broken down into small, digestible components. Why sit with something if you can just read a summary and move on? Let’s be honest, I’m sure we’ve all scanned a headline and assumed we read the piece.