Is it really complaining about quality of AI? The dangerous part is that slop will be harder to detect.
History shows he fundamentally misunderstood the human capacity for adaptation. Rather than succumbing to a sea of printed garbage, society developed sophisticated new filters. We invented the modern bibliography, the peer-review process, the concept of a "trusted publisher," and the critical literacy skills required to navigate a world where information was no longer a rare luxury. Humans have an innate drive to seek out signal over noise. Just as the chaos of the early printing era eventually gave way to the Enlightenment, our current struggle with synthetic content will likely trigger a new evolution in how we verify truth and value human insight.
Besides, your link between the "chaos of the early printing press" and the start of the Enlightenment is very forced. The Greek philosophers did plenty of critical thinking after all, and they had no need for a printing press. I see absolutely zero reason why the current AI bubble will inevitably result in an Enlightenment-like period, nor why AI would be a hard requirement for one.
So when you say zero reason, I have to tell you that your absolutist stance is blindness. There are many reasons why it can happen, and many reasons why it can’t.
There is also a darker future where AI improves to the point where it’s no longer slop. It produces quality code, texts, and books that are better and in a fraction of a second after one misspelled prompt. Given the past trajectory of AI, this is the more likely outcome.
The other outcome is AI flatlines. This is as good as it gets. In which case the future you predict may come to pass.
The key here is human thought as you said. Whether these books were written by clerics or printed by the press these were still containing human produced substance. It's not a fair comparison.