By Ganiu Bamgbose, PhD
There was a time when finding an answer required a journey. One had to visit a library, search through books, consult an encyclopedia, ask a teacher, speak to an expert or spend hours studying a subject. Today, a question can be typed into an artificial intelligence platform and an answer can appear within seconds. AI can summarise hundreds of pages, explain difficult concepts, generate essays, analyse data, translate languages and even produce what looks like sophisticated intellectual arguments. This remarkable convenience, however, presents us with a question that deserves serious consideration: if AI has the answers in seconds, why should we still read in the 21st century?
The answer is that reading has never been merely about obtaining answers. Reading is about developing the mind that asks questions, evaluates answers and produces knowledge.
This distinction is particularly important in a country like Nigeria, where the development of intellectual capacity should remain a national priority. We cannot afford to become a society that is technologically assisted but intellectually dependent. A developing country needs citizens who can think critically, interrogate information, conduct research, engage ideas and generate indigenous solutions to indigenous problems. AI can assist with these processes, but it cannot substitute for the intellectual formation required to perform them responsibly. Reading is one of the principal ways through which that formation occurs.
A serious reader does not merely consume information. The reader wrestles with ideas. A book may challenge one’s assumptions, introduce an unfamiliar perspective, expose contradictions or force one to rethink what one previously believed. Reading develops concentration, patience, vocabulary, imagination, analytical ability and intellectual stamina. These are qualities that cannot be downloaded instantly.
There is, therefore, a danger in confusing access to information with possession of knowledge. A student who asks AI to explain a concept may receive an excellent explanation without necessarily understanding the intellectual process through which that knowledge was developed. A researcher who asks AI to summarise twenty articles may obtain a summary without engaging deeply with the arguments contained in those articles. A writer who allows AI to generate every paragraph may eventually discover that although the words are available, the ideas are not truly his or hers. This is where over-reliance on AI becomes potentially dangerous to the psyche and to mental development.
The human mind develops through use. Just as physical muscles require resistance to become stronger, intellectual abilities require mental effort. AI is like supplements for the body; supplements cannot take the place of physical and mental engagements. If every difficult task is immediately outsourced to a machine, we may gradually lose our tolerance for difficulty. We may become impatient with long books, complex arguments and problems without immediate solutions. The danger is not that AI will suddenly make humans unintelligent; it is that humans may gradually stop exercising the intellectual capacities that make them intelligent.
This is especially worrying for younger generations. A student who grows accustomed to asking AI for every definition, explanation, assignment, argument and conclusion may become increasingly uncomfortable with independent thinking. The student may know how to obtain an answer without knowing how to arrive at one. More troublingly, the student may become unable to distinguish between a convincing answer and a correct one.
This matters because AI can be wrong. It can reproduce biases, misunderstand context, manufacture information and present inaccurate claims with remarkable confidence. A person who has not developed the habit of reading widely and critically is less equipped to recognise such problems. The more dependent we become on AI without developing our own intellectual capacity, the more vulnerable we become to whatever AI tells us.
For Nigeria, the implications are profound. We should be using AI to accelerate intellectual development, not to bypass it. Our universities, schools and research institutions need stronger cultures of reading, writing, inquiry and debate. At a time when Nigeria requires innovative solutions to problems in education, healthcare, governance, technology, agriculture, security and economic development, we need minds capable of producing original ideas rather than merely prompting machines to reproduce existing ones.
There is also a cultural dimension to this conversation. A society that does not read extensively risks becoming dependent on knowledge produced elsewhere. If Nigerian scholars, students and policymakers rely excessively on AI-generated interpretations without engaging deeply with Nigerian books, archives, languages, histories, philosophies and lived experiences, we could end up allowing machines trained largely on existing global knowledge to mediate our understanding of ourselves. AI should help us interrogate our realities, not prevent us from studying them ourselves.
This does not mean that we should reject AI. That would be neither practical nor desirable. AI is one of the most powerful intellectual tools of our time. It can serve as a research assistant, brainstorming partner, tutor, editor and analytical aid. But a tool becomes dangerous when its convenience encourages the user to surrender the very capacity the tool was supposed to enhance.
The goal, therefore, should not be to choose between AI and reading. It should be to cultivate people who can use AI because they have first developed the capacity to think without it. The 21st-century reader may no longer need to read merely to find an answer. We now read for something deeper: to develop the mind capable of questioning the answer.
AI can give us information in seconds. Reading gives us the intellectual muscles to interrogate that information. AI can generate words. Reading helps us develop ideas. AI can summarise knowledge. Reading helps us understand knowledge.
And perhaps that is why, in the age of artificial intelligence, we need readers more than ever. Won’t you rather be that reader who sends AI on errands than that fellow whose reasoning is dependent on machines?
(c) 2026 Ganiu Bamgbose writes from Lagos.
Ganiu Abisoye Bamgbose, PhD
Department of English,
Lagos State University, Ojo
[email protected]
08093695359, 07084956118
