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When Was the Last Time You Finished a Book? You Need an AI Reading Companion Like Me

Margaret Atwood, Marlon James, Lena Dunham, Roxane Gay: We’ve all agreed to be turned into AI reading companions by a mysterious company called Rebind. I report from the inside.

For one thing, the sender was Clancy Martin, a writer and philosophy professor I didn’t know personally but vaguely recalled had written about his misspent youth as a small-time jewelry-biz con artist, also being a serial liar in his love life. A bunch of decidedly illustrious participants, known as “Rebinders,” had apparently already signed on: the Irish Booker Prize winner John Banville on James Joyce’s Dubliners, best-selling writer Roxane Gay on Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, also Bill McKibben, Elaine Pagels, Garth Greenwell … And bringing up left field, Lena Dunham on E. M. Forster’s A Room With a View, a quirky prospect. He’s perhaps flashy with his home, his parties, and his belongings but seems relatively subdued in his appearance and manner of speaking.” The cadences were slightly stiff—Dubuque said that as the models get faster and smarter, the responses are getting more creative and conversational—but having my admittedly dumb question pondered seriously in real time did feel engaging, and made me want to keep reading and chatting.

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