Written language has been foundational not only to our progress in civilization but to the very concept of being a literate person. For the first time in history, generative AI has mechanized the production of written text and multimodal meanings – something that until now, humans had sole control over. Machines could reproduce meaning, but they could not make meaning, until now.
This raises provocative questions: Why write when a machine can do it instantly? Why read when a text can be spoken to you at just the right level of difficulty? Could humans just rely on pictures, movies, and AI-generated voices to tell us what we need to know? With the rise of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), we are at a moment of profound disruption that compels us to rethink what it means to be literate.
Rather than diminishing the importance of literacy, this disruption offers an opportunity to expand and deepen its meaning. The traditional view of literacy as simply “the ability to read and write” feels increasingly inadequate in our AI-enhanced world. Today’s students need to navigate a landscape where knowledge isn’t just contained in written texts, but flows through multiple channels and is augmented by Artificial Intelligence. They must learn to construct meaning not only from words on a page, but through an intricate dance of human and machine capabilities – what we might call “extended cognition.”
The definition of literacy could be expanded to include one’s ability to know how to use all forms of technology effectively to acquire, access, consume, and curate a large amount of information to create unique and complex products that demonstrate one’s process of thinking. In other words, being able to leverage extended cognition has to be foundational in redefining literacy as a skill in this new AI-powered world.
Since machines can handle the mechanical aspects of reading and writing, we must not lose focus on the distinctively human elements that comprise literate thought – our capacity to think deeply with emotional intelligence, foster connection, create novel ideas, and share specific personal and cultural experiences. Students need to recognize themselves as meaning makers with unique perspectives that only they can convey through their style and voice. Rather than replacing their thoughts, AI can serve as a tool to increase their natural intelligence while allowing them to maintain agency and authenticity in their work.
The true impact of GenAI on education is still unfolding, but one thing is clear – we need to redefine literacy and its component skills for this new era. Literacy practices can no longer be limited to the ability to read, understand, and produce written texts. Instead, becoming literate must include knowing how to navigate and utilize a broad range of tools that enable complex knowledge creation.
We need to define literacy not by what it is, but by what it does. Literacy enables learners to extract, construct, integrate, critique, and apply meaning in activities across a range of social and cultural contexts. In this age of AI, we must develop pedagogies in which students learn with and through the machine—not to replace human thought, but to extend and elevate it. This is a more interesting, albeit challenging, vision for literacy—and one that will better prepare our students for the world they are inheriting.
Interested in reading more about this topic? Check out the fall 2024 edition of Literacy Today: Literacy and the AI Evolution.
Sources:
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- Glazer, K. (2024). Redefining Literacy. Literacy Today, 42(2), 31-32.
- Kalantzis, M., & Cope, B. (2024). Literacy in the time of Artificial Intelligence. Reading Research Quarterly, 60(1). https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.591
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