What an AI reading assistant should do

An AI reading assistant should help you work through a text: clarify an obstacle, ask a useful question, and point to the passage your interpretation needs to address. It should leave the explanation and judgment with you. AIReader is built to that standard, with a dial that turns assistance up or down as you need it.

When choosing an AI reading companion, try it on a paragraph you find difficult. Write your own first reading, then ask for help with one unresolved point. Judge the response by the work it gives you next: something to inspect, explain, or reconsider. That is the standard we propose for assistance that supports reading.

Decide whether you want a summary or a scaffold

Consider two possible requests about a chapter. The first asks for a condensed account of its argument. The second offers your account and asks which part needs closer attention. Choose between them according to your purpose, and make that purpose explicit before asking for help.

If you need an overview to decide what to read, request a brief orientation with references to the relevant sections. If you want to understand the reasoning, attempt an explanation yourself, then ask for a prompt that sends you back to the text. Keep any supplied overview available for checking against the source.

By scaffolding, we mean help organized around the reader's next attempt. A scaffold might be a question about a key term, a pointer to an overlooked sentence, or a request to connect evidence with a claim. This is our design definition, rather than a claim that any product carrying that label improves learning.

For example, imagine a hypothetical essay arguing that a town should preserve an unused building. You write, “The author values its history.” A useful next prompt might ask which passage connects that historical value to the proposed decision. You would still need to locate the connection and decide whether it holds.

Preserve difficulty that serves learning

Robert Bjork's concept of desirable difficulties distinguishes helpful learning challenges from obstacles that merely impede progress. Elizabeth and Robert Bjork explain in Making Things Hard on Yourself, But in a Good Way (2011) that conditions such as spaced practice and retrieval can support lasting learning even when practice feels harder. They also stress that difficulty becomes undesirable when a learner lacks the knowledge or skills to respond successfully. Bjork and Bjork, 2011.

Our design inference is to preserve the attempt while offering help with the obstacle. If you cannot interpret a technical term, the companion should help you examine its use in context. After that, it should leave you to explain the sentence. The goal should be a task you can attempt, without making struggle an end in itself.

Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke's 2006 study of prose learning found better delayed retention after recall practice than after restudying. That supports asking a reader to retrieve what they read. It does not establish that an AI question is better than a question from a notebook or another person. Roediger and Karpicke, 2006.

Apply that distinction when requesting assistance. Try to state the chapter's claim before asking the companion to respond. If your account is incomplete, ask for the smallest prompt that lets you make another attempt. Check the revised account against the chapter rather than accepting the exchange itself as evidence of understanding.

Use the dial to choose how much help enters

AIReader offers three modes: deep, dialogue, and diabolical. The rule is that higher settings bring more assistance while keeping authorship and judgment with the person. The table summarizes that intended behavior for reading.

Mode	Companion's role	Your next task
deep	Offers self-directed prompts without generated answers or commentary	State the passage's claim in your own words
dialogue	Asks a focused question or offers a nudge	Follow the question back into the passage
diabolical	Gives a precise critique tied to the text and a reading principle	Weigh the critique and revise or defend your interpretation

In the building example, start in deep and write why you think the author favors preservation. Turn to dialogue if you cannot identify the support for that position. Request a question about the connection you are missing, then try to answer it with a passage reference.

Use diabolical when you have an interpretation you want challenged. Ask the companion to identify an unsupported step and explain why it matters. You should be able to reject that critique with evidence, accept it, or leave the point unresolved. The mode should not require agreement with the assistant.

Turn the dial down when you have enough to continue. AIReader treats quiet as part of the design: an intervention should be brief and leave room for the person to work. For your own session, take a prompt back to the book before requesting another one.

Require help that you can check

Ask the companion to distinguish the author's statement from its own inference. For the building example, it should identify the sentence it is discussing before suggesting that the author has overlooked an alternative. You should be able to inspect that passage without searching through a long explanation.

Prefer a bounded request such as “Point to the step my explanation leaves out.” Require a reason for the response, and compare that reason with the surrounding paragraphs. If the passage is ambiguous, ask the companion to state what remains uncertain and what evidence would help resolve it.

Keep the question attached to the work you want to do. If you are examining a narrator's reliability, ask about a discrepancy between passages. If you are studying an argument, ask about the link between a premise and its conclusion. These are suggested requests, not promises about a particular response.

Judge the session by your next independent attempt

After using assistance, put its answer aside and explain the passage again. Include the claim, the relevant support, and the point you still cannot settle. Check your account against the text, preserving uncertainty where the evidence leaves room for more than one reading.

Use that attempt to decide what help to request next. If you still cannot explain a key term, narrow the request to that term. If you can explain the passage but dispute it, write your objection and its grounds. Let your next action follow from your reading of the source.

To try this approach in our invite-only beta, bring one difficult passage and your own first response to AIReader.