Tech skepticism, capitalism critique, existential fear: What’s really driving the AI debate at the book fair

Book fair, day two. I’m sitting in on a panel about RAG as a game changer. Publishing content, locked away in closed systems to make it more marketable. The talk is of revenue models and access control, and no one in the room has a problem with that. Capitalism in its purest form, delivered matter-of-factly and without shame.

One hall further down, the auditorium is significantly larger and significantly fuller. Here, people are listening to sustainability experts. And here too, AI is on the agenda — but as a counterargument: the models‘ appetite for energy, the consumption of resources, the question of who will foot the bill. One hall celebrates the technology as a business model; the other challenges it as a cost to the planet and its inhabitants.

Two halls, two worlds, one topic. Anyone listening carefully at this fair can tell: several conversations are running under a single label.

The first is tech skepticism. It is often justified. Hallucinations, unreliability, unresolved copyright questions, and yes, energy consumption — these are real problems, not mere sensitivities. And one demand can be heard everywhere: clear AI transparency. Anyone using AI must say so. Anyone abusing the technology to deceive consumers is someone the industry must stand up against.

The second is capitalism critique. Is AI handing ice-cold capitalism the upper hand in the book world too? The RAG panel delivers the answer without spelling it out. You can dismiss this as envy, but that misses the point. Asking who owns the models and who profits from them is a question about distribution. You don’t have to share that concern, but you do have to take it seriously.

The third is existential fear. It is rarely spoken about openly. When people in the industry talk about „quality“ and „soul,“ they often mean income and relevance. The fair itself offers an apt illustration: the new hall layout means less crowding, but many nostalgists want their old mental map of the halls back. That map is gone for good. Too much has shifted in the book market.

And yet AI has another side, one that belongs in any honest reckoning. It democratizes writing and publishing. Anyone who genuinely has something to say can say it faster with these tools — even without generating a single sentence. Speed is the lever. AI lies like a carpet on which a transforming book industry must first learn to walk.

Whether that is enough to outweigh the energy appetite remains an open question. That is precisely what makes the debate so compelling: the counter-argument sits one floor below and draws a larger audience than the argument in favor.

That both halls are essentially telling the same story is illustrated by one name that was impossible to miss at this fair: Jill Lepore. The Harvard historian, this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner, was declared the „author of the moment“ by the Taunus Zeitung. In „The Machine Age“ (C.H. Beck), she writes against a handful of American tech billionaires who are deciding the future of humanity without ever having been elected to do so. Her remedy is protest — including against data centers — and a new awareness of what a fully mechanized world actually costs.

In Lepore’s framing, the RAG panel upstairs and the sustainability auditorium downstairs are one and the same subject: who owns the machines, and who pays for them, and why? Whether her answer — a romantic one — is sufficient is something even the Taunus Zeitung’s reviewer doubts. Appeals alone do not tame tech empires. That is the open question, and it will keep the industry occupied long after any panel has ended.

My own takeaway remains simple: would the criticism disappear if AI worked perfectly? If yes, it was a critique of technology. If no, it was always about power, money, and the future. It’s worth knowing which conversation you actually want to have before you start having it.

And what to read on the subject? Martin Suter’s new novel is a must in any case. Anyone interested in the impact of the machines on the state should reach for Lepore. On the wine, I’ll say nothing. It was a book fair, after all.

This English version was created with the help of AI (translated from the German original) and may differ slightly from a professional human translation.