A Way with Words

A brilliant examination of history and language that explains why AI, for all of its wonders, cannot truly speak.

For all of history, the only creature on earth that could speak was man. Then suddenly, with the dawn of artificial intelligence, a machine could talk back. AI seems to do the very thing that makes us human. 

Yet appearance is deceptive. Are the bots really speaking? What does it mean to speak? And why is language so essential to what we are as a species? In this urgent yet timeless book, classicist and polymath Spencer A. Klavan addresses these questions and constructs a resounding defense of human language—man’s unique power of thought and expression that is as old as Homo sapiens itself. The result is the most illuminating response to AI yet offered. 

Guiding us on a breathtaking journey through the history of language, Klavan reveals the wonder of our universal capacity to communicate the internal world of one’s mind through external sounds and symbols. Though it is now fashionable to deny that words have any meaning at all, Klavan shows that human words draw meaning from the cosmic Word—the logos imprinted on creation. This is the mystery of language, and the key to our unique place in the world.