From lost papyrus to AI filters: Who decides what knowledge survives?

I often wonder about the lost literature of the past and the great philosophical works that never got transmitted. In her book ‘Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World,’ Irene Vallejo recounts the evolution of books from their primitive beginnings to the digital age. She highlights the physical fragility of books, noting how easily they can deteriorate, be lost, or be deliberately destroyed. Reading the book, one cannot help but lament the disappearance of so many works, some of which now survive only in fragments. One wonders how much of the ancient literary world has vanished over time.

The reasons for this loss are surprisingly mundane. Many texts were written on papyrus (the title of Vallejo’s book), which slowly deteriorates with age. As the centuries passed, thousands of ancient books decayed. The only way to preserve them was to copy them onto parchment made from animal skin. But parchment was expensive. Producing it required substantial resources, and the economy of the time simply could not support copying every surviving text.

In many places, the work of copying books was carried out in monasteries by monks. One might recall scenes from ‘The Name of the Rose,’ starring Sean Connery, where young monks carefully copy and illustrate old texts. Now imagine having enough parchment to copy only a small fraction of all the books available. Which ones would you choose? Someone had to decide. Naturally, monks and their abbots prioritised mostly Christian theological writings. These were the texts they studied and believed to be most important. The result was a quiet but powerful filter on history. As a consequence, today we possess more surviving works by St. Augustine than the entire body of classical pagan Latin literature combined. Many other works from the ancient world disappeared forever.

The crucial point is that no one deliberately planned this outcome. It occurred because a small group of people, constrained by time and resources, had to make decisions about what to preserve. Their location, personal histories, and intellectual commitments shaped those choices.

Modern equivalent: How AI bots filter information

This story matters today because a similar process may be unfolding again, though in a different form. Our problem today is not a scarcity of knowledge. Instead, the challenge is that the available knowledge on almost any topic is vast and difficult to navigate. Yet the underlying issue is similar. What we see when we search for information often depends on someone else’s choices.

Search engines and AI chatbots summarise large amounts of information and often become the first place people turn when seeking explanations. What these systems choose to present influences what people know and how they understand the world. In effect, these technologies are becoming curators of knowledge. Like the monks who once copied manuscripts, AI systems must sort and select information. Some material becomes easy to find, while other material becomes harder to see.

Over time, this filtering can shape what people learn and what they forget. This is why the humanities—fields such as history, ethics, and philosophy—are so important in the age of AI.

History reminds us that knowledge does not survive by accident. What we know about the past depends on decisions about what is preserved and what is ignored. The story of decaying papyri shows how easily a culture’s memory can be shaped by those who control preservation. Ethical reasoning allows us to ask whether such choices are just and fair. AI systems are trained on large collections of data that may contain biases or errors.

When these systems guide decisions about jobs, loans, policing, or education, the question is not only whether the system functions effectively but whether the outcomes are just. Ethics keeps us attentive to questions of fairness and power relations. The history of philosophy can also help us think more carefully about judgment. A machine can process enormous amounts of information, but deciding what is important or trustworthy is a different task altogether. That requires reflection, philosophical acuity, and a sense of responsibility. The monks who copied manuscripts did not intend to reshape the history of ideas. Yet their decisions profoundly influenced which voices from antiquity survived.

Basic problem remains same

Something similar could happen today. As AI systems become more central to the organisation of knowledge, they may quietly shape what societies pay attention to and what fades from view. The scale, however, is far larger now. Instead of choosing among a thousand manuscripts, modern systems sort through millions of articles, books, and posts every day.

Yet the basic problem remains the same. Someone or something, must decide what remains visible. The lesson from the lost books of antiquity is that technologies often carry hidden costs and that every choice involves trade-offs. The monks were preserving knowledge using the best tools available to them. Systems of preservation inevitably require selection.

Understanding those choices, and thinking carefully about their consequences, is one of the tasks of the humanities. In the age of AI, that task has become more important than ever. Technologists, as well as the users of these technologies (in other words, all of us) should not deprive ourselves of the insights and resources that the humanities provide.

(Danish Hamid, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Nayanta University)

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Published – March 17, 2026 08:00 am IST