MIT's Shared Reading Program Answers the AI Age With Fiction

MIT Reads, the MIT Libraries' shared reading program, is marking its 10-year anniversary by being reimagined for the age of artificial intelligence — and the reinvention points away from the technology. The program is turning its focus to fiction and memoir, and to the particular power of stories to help readers understand themselves and their place in the world. “Reading fiction prompts us to think about how what we build might change us,” says MIT Libraries Director Chris Bourg. That is a more interesting argument than the usual defence of reading as enrichment: fiction, framed this way, is where builders rehearse what their building does to them.