By Iqra Shaukat
T. S. Eliot once asked, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” Due to artificial intelligence, it has become increasingly challenging to transform information into knowledge and knowledge into wisdom. The wisdom and emotions attached to literature seem to have lost their essence in both letter and spirit. Instead, numerous questions continue to linger in our minds. Is there still a need for literature in our lives, or have we lost its true spirit altogether?
No one can deny the usefulness of generative AI. It enables us to explore ideas, to gather information, and to save valuable time. However, its growing influence also makes literature more significant than ever before. In a fraction of a second, AI can generate poems in the style of Shakespeare, sonnets by Vittoria Colonna, speeches inspired by Churchill, or even a ghazal influenced by Iqbal. It can certainly assist writers, but it cannot transform those words into timeless works of art. A timeless piece of literature is shaped not only by language but also by emotions, experiences, and the depth of human consciousness.
Artificial intelligence has undoubtedly become one of the greatest producers of language in history. Yet literature is not merely the production of language; it is the expression of human consciousness, memory, imagination, emotions, and lived experience. The machine has written, but has it felt? Has it remembered any memories, suffered while hurt, hoped despite sadness, doubted in a moment of certainty, loved by creatures, or hated owing to wrongdoings?
The more machines learn to write, the more humanity will need literature to remember what it truly means to be human. In an age when machines can write better than humans, is literature still relevant? The answer is not merely yes; literature has become more relevant than ever. AI writes for humans, whereas literature presents better for lives. This is the fundamental distinction.
Artificial Intelligence uses word association to predict the next word, leveraging machine learning models trained on vast amounts of human-generated data. Large Language Models can analyse patterns and probabilities to generate associated words and ideas. Literature, on the other hand, seeks to reveal deeper truths about human existence. AI assists us by processing information, by improving productivity, and by saving time. However, literature serves a far greater purpose: it helps us interpret life itself.
For example, AI can explain the biological causes of death, but literature enables us to experience the grief, fear, love, and hope associated with it. Literature interprets life through imagination while remaining grounded in human realities. It explores human existence in all its complexity and reveals the many layers of our emotions, relationships, and experiences. Similarly, artificial intelligence analyses patterns in information and presents them in meaningful ways, whereas literature creates meaning from humanity’s lived experiences.
People often consider literature to be the only form of writing and expressing thoughts, but it is more than that. Writing is a skill, the hardest skill to learn; in fact, not everyone can be a writer just by assembling scattered thoughts. Neither would it be equal to living with experiences; it would be more than living in literature, where life goes beyond the word into the muse and imagination of thought, becoming part of literature. Literature does not negate the significance of Artificial intelligence in our lives, but it can’t express our childhood memories. Therefore, AI is synthetic for a reason. The literature provides insight into the feeling of grief and how it would change the pyramid of life, where things are different in reality, and mere words wouldn’t be enough to get catharsis from grief.
If that were the case, notable writers such as Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, and Iqbal would be replaceable. Instead, their work lives in the present because it emerged from lived human experience rather than from statistical word prediction and association.
Literature creates moral imagination. It is not considered the hardest to make laws where governments can easily make legal decisions. Making art by imitation is easy, but with the intervention of human capabilities, it would make it easy to make legal decisions. Nevertheless, algorithms optimise the ideas and provide different opportunities. Still, only literature can humanise it and live in the present. Even the art of work from several decades has become still relevant in present due to the trait of literature by living in present.
To cap it all, we can see from the lens of literature. Milton’s essay work or the plotting art of Charles Dickens is exceptional, not because they write it beautifully but because they have explored power structures, seeking justice, and identity formation, etc. There are a few questions that remain relevant today despite AI, such as seeking freedom, finding eternal love and morality at the highest level. Even within Pakistan’s literary heritage, the renowned names and works of Galib, Bano Qudsia, or Faiz Ahmad Faiz are not comparable. AI can translate their work, but it cannot become them just for the emulation.
Then, should we be intimidated by the emergence of AI when it comes to preserving the literature? The answer is that the danger is not AI; it is compounded when humans have stopped reading altogether. The perpetual habit of reading has been reduced. Humans have stopped thinking and even prefer to share scattered thoughts with machines, where they can answer them instead of making an effort for clear thinking. They have stopped imagining and looking for muses to get an overall, holistic understanding. Utmost, we have considered AI as a supreme authority, and we even stopped questioning and considering whether they are better than humans. Conclusively, we have admitted that they can outperform humans, ignoring the fact that AI can also be in a state of hallucination. This is where literature becomes a form of resistance against intellectual laziness.
To sum up the discussion, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that Artificial intelligence may soon write books faster than any human author. It can even summarise libraries within seconds and convert them into more evidence-based information. Still, every sentence would embody only words, stories and experiences. These are created by humans first, and machines learn them from humans by inheriting language codes. Literature can create civilisation rather than work within a utopian world; it has a comprehensive capacity to provide.
The future will not belong to those who merely know how to use artificial intelligence. In fact, in future, those who retain and use the human capacities that no algorithm can replicate. AI cannot ignore as humans do; only literature can show empathy and experience it through feeling. Even making complex questions made them reach their limitations, to the extent that human-trained machines can’t dream and picture the whole idea. That is the reason why, when machines write, humans must continue to read.
