AI & Fingerspitzengefühl

In my first post I mentioned how I anticipated more anger and fear at the ALA in Chicago, and want to circle back to what made me say that. I think it's in part my own previous fear that I projected on others, which of course is not fair. Not fair by a long shot.

I had only seen sloppy usage of AI by students (and teachers too - sorry) in the past and I did not see the enormous power behind it that, directed with precision, could be pretty pivotal for us librarians. Earlier this year we were targeted as moneychasing monsters trying to get rid of librarians altogether. Though nothing could be further from the truth, it perhaps hit extra hard since I've stood where they are standing. On a good note, it made us take a step back to make sure that the narrative was our own, and that we were more careful in how we expressed ourselves going forward regarding time-saving and who should be the process owner in the school library.

First we tried washing out everything that could indicate AI, but after ALA I believe more strongly than ever that we should lean into what it is that we do here. We are creating AI-driven tools for librarians - to save time and make sure that librarians are able to spend their day making decisions and focusing on human interaction that no AI will ever be able to do, in my opinion - relationship building takes time and Fingerspitzengefühl. We've had discussions in the team, and if we find out that a librarian will be cut and our product is used as an ignorant form of replacement, we have decided not to sell Librar to them. In short: we can't tell managers what to do, but we can hold our moral high ground. Hopefully it'll never come to that, but to be honest, it feels good.

To make it real, let's choose some examples from my "floor": if someone thinks that existing AI could help anyone trying to find their place in the world by offering support and knowing when to back off, comfort someone who has just experienced a family tragedy, or make careful judgement calls on what sources to use for an academic project - they are deeply misinformed. What AI can be is a tool - a really powerful one, but still just a tool!

We're experiencing a second major shift in my active work life (yes, I was around before the internet became mainstream, so there!) and this will probably land differently in the end than we all think, but I firmly believe that the more librarians can be involved in the transfer from data to knowledge, the better. When the internet landed, it was just as hyped by investors, though - much like at ALA - librarians met it with less fear than I'd have expected. The real difference is that librarians were early adopters back then, to a degree I don't see today. I mean, pre-Google, the search engine Yahoo relied heavily on library professionals to categorize the internet, starting in 1994, deciding what was relevant and good - and even though Google managed to outsmart the somewhat naive relevance-based engines, I sorely miss the diversity.

What's new doesn't have to be scary - what's scary was always people. People with no judgement and no sense of long-term causality and kindness.