Much of the worry about AI is that it will erode how well we write. Australian oral historian Shirleene Robinson thinks the bigger loss may be our ability to listen.

She made the case in an opinion column for The Guardian.

“Listening to different views and entering into different worlds is integral to our humanity,” she wrote.

Fewer words every year

Robinson argues that people are already talking less, even as AI chatbots promise faster replies and so-called empathetic listening.

She points to research by psychologists at the University of Missouri–Kansas City and the University of Arizona. They found people spoke about 338 fewer words a day for each year between 2005 and 2019, the University of Arizona said.

Daily speech fell from about 16,000 words to around 12,700. Those under 25 saw the steepest drop.

The data comes mostly from the US and Europe, and ends in 2019. That is before today’s chatbots became widely used.

Voices from the archive

Robinson led the team behind the oral history collection at the National Library of Australia from 2018 to early 2024. It holds more than 58,000 hours of recordings, dating back to 1957.

She has heard First Nations Australians describe deep history, and members of the Stolen Generations give testimony. She has also heard a refugee who fled Vietnam by sea, and a Darwin doctor who survived Cyclone Tracy.

Hearing people unlike us builds empathy, she argues. That is what she fears will be lost.

“Empathy is the richest gift listening offers. That will be our greatest loss if we speak and hear less,” she wrote.

The concern comes as more people turn to chatbots each year.