The Full SLAAIT

Hello SLAAIT readers. This is a packed issue, so buckle up and get your reading glasses on, or good lighting, or whatever you need--possibly an AI assistant to read this to you and summarize it?

Our upcoming hybrid SLAAIT meeting will take place on Saturday, June 29th, from 9:00am-11:00am Pacific Time at San Diego State University’s Library (5500 Campanile Drive). Logistics and additional details are forthcoming.

Please note, that while this meet up is occurring at the same time as the ALA’s Annual Conference, it is in no way connected to ALA or at the same facility.

This may be of interest to anyone attending the American Library Association's upcoming Annual Conference.

You may view ALA’s AI-related programming guide here.

Below is a guide that I compiled, that has two additional talks that weren’t listed on ALA’s list.

Format is time/location/title/presenters.

Saturday, June 29, 2024

8:30-10:00am. Room 26AB. S[ai]ge Advice: Claim the Center of the AI Conversation by Leveling Up AI Leaders. Gillian Cain, Chris Rosser, Michael Hanegan.

9:00-10:00am. Room 30ABCDE. Breaking Boundaries: Harnessing the Power of Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT to Transform Library Services. Rebecca Bakker, Meissa Del Castillo, Christopher Jimenez.

11:00am-12:00pm. Room 8. Literacy Reborn: How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming the Way We Read, Write, and Learn. Mike McQueen.

2:30-3:30pm. Room 24AB. Centering the Student: Gathering Student Perspectives and Creating Content on Generative AI. Shelby Hallman, Renee Romero, and Hannah Sutherland.

4:00-5:00pm. Room 32AB. Supporting Research Skills and Information Literacy in a Post-AI Landscape. No presenters listed.

Sunday, June 30, 2024

1:00-2:00pm. Room 5B. Reengineering Research: Integrating Generative AI and Prompt Engineering into Information Literacy Programs. Mary Ann Naumann.

2:30-3:30pm. Room 30ABCDE. Books Unbound: Libraries in the Age of AI. Heather Turner.

2:30-3:30pm. Room 32AB. Sharpening Your Ethical Knowledge of Artificial Intelligence. Norman Mooradian.

Monday, July 1, 2024

9:00-10:00am. Room 23ABC. Demystifying AI for Business and Libraries. Min Tong, Eduardo Velasquez, Andy Spackman, and Peter McKay.

9:00-10:00am. Room 25ABC. Pondering Primary Sources: Authenticity, Bias, and Controversy in Historical Research. Roxanne Owens, Sarah Aronson, Candace Fleming, Cyndi Giorgis, and Sherri Smith.

9:00-10:00am. Room 28ABC. Top Tech Trends. David King.

1:00-2:00pm. Room 28DE. Generative Artificial Intelligence, Libraries, and the People They Serve: A Guided Discussion. Peter Musser, Trevor Watkins, Bohyun Kim, and Yinlin Chen.

A reminder that we moved the start date of the project to May 1. So, one month in it might be good to get a status report of where we are and where we are going. A rough view of the road.

We started with some basic briefings and basics of setting up tools and found some sense of the literature discussion of AI. So, done:

• The many definitions of AI
• Key terms such as Machine Learning, Algorithms, Augmented Intelligence, Generative AI and more.
• Models of AI in terms of autonomy and visibility in the interface

So where to now? Let’s start with knowing what we need to know to understand our relationship to AI. I’ll put these under the broad heading “Competencies.” We know from the interviews that many of you are interested in competencies for librarians, and more broadly for schools and the community.

AI Competencies – what librarians and staff need to know now

• Currently organized around AI Basics [terminology and models], Data [issues of data quality, data wrangling, ethics of data], Algorithms [algorithmic bias, heuristic versus deterministic], and Machine Learning [deep learning, neural networks]
• Focus on what librarians need to evaluate AI claims, participate in AI projects beyond the discipline, and the impact of all of these on our served communities.
• The goal is informed action, not transformation into computer scientists.

As I write this, we’re putting together a digest and synthesis of existing AI competencies and a framework for us to start a discussion via email next week. If you have learning outcomes/curricula/competencies you see that we should include, please bring them forward. We’re also organizing webinars with folks doing this kind of training. A project to look at is LibraryLinkNJ AI Library Ambassadors. I’ll also be posting an after-school AI program developed here at the University of Texas with the support of IMLS.

So, with the foundation behind us, whereto next? We’re sticking to the DREAM/DREAD/DECONSTRUCT frame created by Stacey Aldrich of Hawaii.

We already have some ideas for Dreaming. The big idea for us to look at is the growing PublicAI movement. If you haven’t had the chance take a look at the Libraries in Response recording on the topic. This group is REALLY interested in talking with you. We may have them at our June hybrid meeting in San Diego.

DREAM: the following are suggested topics, but this will really be determined through member interviews, expertise, and context. So these topics are more examples than hard topics

• The reality of “Augmented Intelligence” where the librarian can use AI to increase impact.
• The need for a national public AI infrastructure and the role of libraries
• The use of generative AI to facilitate community story creation and sharing
• How AI tools can help all voices in a community tell their authentic story
• The use of Large Language Models (such as ChatGPT) in analyzing qualitative data (written feedback for example) and in evaluation

I don’t anticipate a nice clear line between dream and dreading. One leads to the other. Here are some of the topics already suggested for us to look into:

DREAD

• Does AI threaten library jobs?
• Corrosive AI – the potential threat of AI generated disinformation to public institutions and democratic processes
• Riding Down the Hype Cycle [vendor expectations]
• Ethics and LLM original sin – where systems like ChatGPT where trained on copyrighted works with no credit or payment to creators [cultural heritage issues]
• Overwhelming Production (Amazon Books, Literary Journals, Scholarly Publishing) [How to provide access in an environment where AI produced “synthetic data” overwhelms human centered acquisition and peer review]

Likewise, we already have some simple experiments with using AI systems. In the next week or two we’ll roll out our Virtual AI Lab for the Petting Zoo. This will be a hosted environment (using virtual Windows 11 machines) so you should be able to play without worry about any local IT issues with installing and such.

DECONSTRUCT

• AI Petting Zoo (see next)
• Creation of trained chatbots using member data

That brings us to the big work/deliverable. The creation of briefings on AI tied to your library.

Synthesis of perils and possibilities from member conversation

As always, your participation in these conversations are at the level of effort you have to give, but the more ideas the richer the work.

Look for some conversation starter next week on AI competencies.

Here’s an article to file under “Dream.” NPR has a (feel-good?) story about the creation of an AI version of a man with terminal cancer from Eternos.Life, a company that charges a one-time fee of $5,000 + $500 annually. These avatars of humanity may provide either comfort or discomfit (or possibly both) to grieving loved ones, and it’s an interesting avenue that library patrons might hear about in the media.

This week, Apple announced that Apple Intelligence is coming to our iPhones and other devices. The press release reveals that this will be deeply integrated into iOS 18. The company announces tools such as Rewrite that will enable creators to choose from different past versions of their written compositions, a new Focus setting that makes decisions about which notifications need immediate attention, Image Playground for generating fun images, and an ability to generate a summary of phone call content. This may be a huge way that we first see AI entering our daily lives.

An article published last year in The Economist was brought to my attention this week. It’s an insightful glimpse into our possible future by Dr. Yuval Noah Harari, a multihyphenate intellectual-author-entrepreneur. Densely filled with historical and literary parallels, his thesis is that AI will change the human experience completely. His piece concludes, “If I am having a conversation with someone, and I cannot tell whether it is a human or an AI—that’s the end of democracy.” It’s a great piece and is well worth a read if you subscribe to The Economist; however, it is behind a paywall. Alternately, hear him expound on some of the same principles covered in the article in this video.

I found a real treat for this week's entry: the AI Weirdness Blog, by author-scientist Janelle Shane.

Please, accompany her on her most recent journey to create a box holding a tyrannosaurus rex, a giraffe making a pie, an artistic snake, grocery shopping deer, and a repaired fresco of Jesus. It's delightful.