AI & The Last Humans to Read and Write
Words by Pau Aleikum, edited by Jaya Bonelli
Victor Riparbelli, CEO of Synthesia, one of the biggest Gen-AI video startups, took the stage at TED AI Vienna and dropped a bombshell that sounded less like a visionary prediction and more like the opening monologue of a dystopian sci-fi film: our grandchildren might be the last humans to read and write. He painted a vision of a future dominated by video — a world where text fades into irrelevance, replaced by more “natural” ways of communicating and learning. His argument leaned on data, citing surveys that seemed to show that when it comes to learning, people prefer AI-generated videos over text — emphasizing in the process the undeniable immediacy of visuals. “A picture is worth a thousand words,” he stated, as if unveiling a revelation rather than a well-worn cliché.
The room went abuzz with intrigue, but for me and Marta Handenawer, it triggered a deeper question: What will happen to society when reading and writing are replaced by video?
Marta, sitting beside me, whispered (or maybe half-shouted), “WTF?” — a sentiment that only increased as Riparbelli’s vision unfolded. Sure, video is powerful. It immerses, engages, and informs. But if it edges out the written word entirely, we lose more than just a medium; we lose the cognitive scaffolding that underpins how we imagine, collaborate, and think.
The Marketing Mirage: Radical Substitution vs. Coexistence
Riparbelli’s vision of video as a wholesale replacement for text feels less like a cultural inevitability and more like a well-crafted marketing campaign. Yes, video is increasingly dominant in education, entertainment, and communication. But does that mean it will — or should — replace reading and writing?
In Irene Vallejo’s 2019 essay El infinito en un junco (Infinity in a reed), she reflects on the long-held idea that reading and books are perpetually under threat of extinction — first overshadowed by the rise of e-books, and now seemingly swallowed by the ever-expanding internet. Yet, as a historian, Vallejo reminds us that deep currents shift slowly. There’s a tendency, a futurist bias, to see the “new” as inherently more enduring than the “old.” Compare, for instance, the sight of two people sitting on the subway, a nun and a teenager scrolling Instagram: one feels like a relic, the other a glimpse of the future. One might imagine that this said “figuration of the future”, the teen on Instagram, will become the majority, the norm — even more frequent than it is today. Whereas nuns, as a symbol more closely related to the past, will become “extinct”, being rarer and rarer as time passes. And yet, it’s likely that in the 22nd century, nuns and books will outlast tablets and Instagram, quietly defying the rush of obsolescence.
Perhaps — and hopefully — this perfectly applies in this case: insofar as no amount of claims to the disappearance of reading and writing will actually make it happen — even if the claims in question come from the CEOs of big Gen-AI startups. Whether reading the text on a TikTok post, or writing a message on WhatsApp, reading and writing are so ingrained in our day-to-day that it’s going to take a lot more than video generation tools to rid them from our lives. So, even when Riparbelli announces loud and clear that video will replace everything, it’s not something that will necessarily happen — Rome wasn’t built in a day. And what’s more, perhaps he doesn’t even believe so himself — but he’s just using it as a bold, eye-catching marketing strategy.
The Imagination Blackout: Words, Worlds, and Why Video Can’t Replace Them
To debunk Riparbelli’s claims, let’s start with imagination. Reading isn’t just about absorbing information — it’s an act of creation. When you read the words “a dense, misty forest,” your brain starts working overtime. “What kind of trees?” “What does the air smell like?” “Are there wolves lurking in the shadows, or maybe a picnic with suspiciously understocked baskets?” This cluster of words incites you to imagine what that path looks, feels and smells. No two readers will conjure the same image. It’s active, participatory, and deeply personal. My frustration wasn’t just about personal nostalgia for books; it was about the cognitive cost of sidelining text. If you kill text, you kill imagination. This is not a hyperbola. Words require readers to actively participate. When we read, our minds take abstract symbols — letters and words — and transform them into vibrant mental worlds.
Now, imagine the same scene presented as a video. The forest is there, but it’s perfectly defined. It’s someone else’s forest, locked in high resolution. It might be stunning, but the mental representation is static. No wolves, no picnics, no you in it. Video is consumption; text is collaboration. A forest path on screen might be beautiful, but it’s definitive. There’s no room for your unique interpretation, no space for the kind of imaginative exercise that has been central to human cognitive evolution. Our ability to think abstractly, to turn symbols into ideas and ideas into actions, is rooted in the symbolic nature of written language. Text is an act of co-creation between writer and reader, a dynamic exchange that videos struggle to replicate.
This matters because imagination isn’t just a whimsical pastime; it’s how we solve problems, empathize with others, and envision futures better than the present. Strip that away, and you’re left with… well, Riparbelli’s world: a screen-fed populace, wide-eyed and passive, waiting for the next autoplay.
Reading, Writing, and the Operating Manual for Reality
Riparbelli’s thesis also sidesteps another critical point: reading and writing don’t just serve communicate a message, or content, but they also take us on a journey that helps us understand how the world operates. Losing these skills doesn’t just mean we stop writing essays or reading novels. It means alienating ourselves from the systems that encode, reveal, and question our world, from the algorithms driving AI to the histories written in dusty archives.
Consider programming. Code is written text, a symbolic language through which we shape technology. If we lose the capacity — or the habit — of engaging with text, we lose the ability to understand or influence the systems shaping our lives. This isn’t just a functional loss; it’s a philosophical one. Reading and writing allow us to question, modify, and challenge. For all its strengths, video is harder to edit, annotate, or argue with. It’s designed to be consumed, not interrogated. Writing, in particular, is an act of thinking — an exercise in organising chaos into coherence. Lose that, and we’re not just losing a medium; we’re losing a way of knowing. If we stop writing, we stop understanding. And not in an ‘Oops, I forgot my password’ way. More like, ‘Oops, I forgot how society works.’.
Books as the Quiet Revolutionaries
Books, and, by extension, reading too, are quietly subversive. They require focus in a culture of distraction, demanding patience in a world that prizes immediacy, and critical thought in an age of algorithmic spoon-feeding. They teach us to grapple with complexity and uncertainty, as we seek to find meaning in the gaps.
The act of reading isn’t just about acquiring information; it’s about interiorizing it. They teach us to wrestle with ambiguity and complexity in ways that short-form video, optimized for quick and easy consumption, struggles to match.
Writing, too, is an act of thinking. It forces us to organize our ideas, clarify our thoughts, and engage with the world on a deeper level. To write is to reflect, to analyze, and to create. Losing this skill — or devaluing it — means losing a powerful tool for understanding and shaping the world.
Selena Deckelmann, COO of Wikimedia Foundation, made a related point in her talk on open-source tools. For her, the magic of open source isn’t just that it’s free; it’s that it’s modifiable. It invites collaboration, critique, and improvement. Text operates the same way. You can annotate it, question it, remix it. It’s a conversation, not a monologue.
Video, by contrast, is often a finished product. Sure, you can comment on a YouTube video, but good luck editing it. It’s designed to be consumed, not challenged. And that’s fine — until it’s the only medium we have.
A World Without Words? Not on Our Watch
Riparbelli is right about one thing: video is transformative. It’s a powerful tool for learning, storytelling, and connection. But presenting it as a radical substitute for reading and writing is both shortsighted and dangerous. The future doesn’t have to be either/or. It can — and should — be both/and.
Let’s embrace video for what it can do the best: bringing immediacy, emotion, and context to our stories. We are not without recognizing the emotional and sensorial depth that certain videos, films, or pieces of audiovisual content, can bring. Think of Koyaanisqatsi, the famous 1982 non-narrative documentary consisting of slow-mo and time-lapse imagery of all kinds of places and landscapes. Without the use of words — spoken or written language, the film attains a genuine depth, making you think and reflect in the same way that The Brothers Karamazov do. Videos — when done in certain ways — can be just as cryptic and enigmatically evocative as books. But that’s not always the case — and even if it were, the written word has a unique power to it, without which we forget how to think. So let’s fight to preserve it.
Because while a picture might be worth a thousand words, a single sentence can ignite a thousand imaginations. And that’s something no video will ever replace.
Riparbelli’s vision might sell well in boardrooms and VC pitches, but it’s a nightmare scenario for anyone who values thought, imagination, and agency. Video is powerful, yes -but it’s not — and never will be — a fitting replacement for reading and writing. It’s a complement — a tool to enhance, not erase.
So let’s push back against the idea that text is obsolete. Let’s champion books, letters, and essays not as relics of a bygone era but as vital tools for the future. Because while a picture might be worth a thousand words, it’s the words that teach us how to understand, interpret, and challenge the picture.
In the end, Riparbelli’s grandchildren might not write essays. But maybe, just maybe, they’ll read this one.
