alt Hacker NewsI think people still read, but the problem is largely that people read older literature, meaning anything older than 5-10 years at the very least. People are very hesitant to read something recent because it may very well be AI slop.
It's a crisis in literature. How do we fix this?
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Wait, really?
As best I can tell, the problem is contained to kindle self publishing and the like, which were always unfiltered. And we buy plenty of new books.
None of the most read books of 2026 so far according to Goodreads are significantly older (https://www.goodreads.com/book/most_read?category=all&countr...). Also not the most sold Amazon books: https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2026/books
> People are very hesitant to read something recent because it may very well be AI slop.
I cannot imagine this is an actual trend that's preventing people from reading, so please bring a couple citations.
Reading has been on the decline for more than a decade, far beyond when AI was invented. I'll go with the 2008 Steve Jobs quote:
> In January 2008, Steve Jobs famously claimed that "people don’t read anymore," specifically asserting that 40 percent of Americans read one book or less the previous year.
This is a completely ridiculous statement from someone who obviously does not read much.
AI generated text isn't so hard to detect that people could get away with it. As long as you are reading a well reviewed book the chance of AI slop is very low.
Never heard that this is stopping anyone from reading recent books.
Maybe someone whose only method of selecting books is to scroll through Kindle and look at the titles, maybe they need to pay attention to publication dates. But the rest of the world picks books because they get a recommendation, they look at reviews, they know the author, etc.
NYTimes said that the new Marlon James book might be the book of the century so far. Hyperbole, I'm sure, but it's now on my reading list and I'm pretty sure it wasn't written by AI.