| We’ve uploaded everything anyone has ever known onto a worldwide network of machines. What if it doesn’t have all the answers?  Illustration by Kelli Anderson Are you looking for a college-level essay on Shakespeare’s sonnets, an itinerary for your trip to Lisbon, or a thousand-word synopsis of the world’s knowledge on toadstools? These days, all you need to do is command ChatGPT, and your wish will be granted. But, as Jill Lepore asks in this week’s issue, “what’s the price to humanity of uploading everything anyone has ever known onto a worldwide network of tens of millions or billions of machines and training them to learn from it to produce new knowledge?” Lepore takes us through the history of data science, and examines the ways that humans have been collecting information—long before A.I. became the latest obsession. Even modern tools, with their bits and bytes of magic, have limits. Lepore explores how ambitious endeavors in the field may eventually underwhelm us, and surveys the genius and folly of modern innovators. It turns out there is plenty of value left in older forms of knowledge. No one, after all, wants to sound like the disgraced cryptocurrency investor Sam Bankman-Fried, who declared in an interview last year, “I would never read a book.” Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | 
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