Mark Martin, lecturer and AI educator, shares his insights into how artificial intelligence could reshape literacy and why strong reading, writing and critical-thinking skills may become more valuable, not less.
Did the calculator make us less numerate or did it change what it meant to be numerate?
Calculators removed much of the mechanical work of arithmetic, but they did not remove the need to understand numbers. In fact, knowing whether the answer looked right became even more important.
AI may be about to do something similar to literacy.
The Rise of Elite Literacy
AI can already produce grammatically correct emails, essays, reports and summaries in seconds. That means competent-looking writing is becoming abundant.
But abundance changes what becomes valuable.
The premium may increasingly sit with people who can read deeply, think critically and express ideas with precision.
They will recognise when an AI answer is shallow. They will question an unsupported claim. They will notice when nuance has disappeared, when an argument does not follow, or when confident language is disguising weak reasoning.
AI can generate the words. Literacy helps you judge whether those words are worth anything.
Message for Parents
The response, therefore, should not be to abandon traditional literacy because children now have AI.
Quite the opposite.
Students should read widely. Read aloud. Write regularly. Build vocabulary. Debate ideas. Develop arguments. Learn to distinguish evidence from assertion.
A student with strong foundations can use AI as an amplifier, spotting its errors, refining its outputs and pushing beyond its limitations.
A student who becomes dependent on AI before developing those foundations risks getting stuck at the level AI produces most easily:
mediocre, but grammatically correct.
The comparison with calculators is useful. A student who cannot judge whether a calculation makes sense is vulnerable even when the calculator works perfectly.
The same will increasingly be true of language.
If you cannot judge whether an AI-generated paragraph is accurate, relevant, persuasive or well argued, producing it faster does not make you more literate.
The Bigger Question
Perhaps AI will not kill literacy.
Perhaps it will expose the difference between being able to produce words and being able to think with them.
“When everyone has access to the same AI, the advantage belongs to those who know when it is wrong.”