I think that perspective is mostly just romanticization of reading, which is fine; if you have a book reading fetish nobody is stopping you from reading books.

But in terms of efficiently grokking information I don't think it holds up.

Cliff notes is not the same as ChatGPT. Using cliff notes, you only have a fixed bullet point summarization. But with ChatGPT, if a bullet point is not sticking, you can ask ChatGPT to expound on it. Expound on the stories from Carnegie's life and how that lead him to the techniques he talks about. That mode of learning, having someone to bounce discussion back and forth is really efficient for me.