MLA 2024 Conference

The goal of this panel is to address the impacts and implications of AI use by both users and systems/ product vendors with the focus on their effects on the libraries. We will discuss the social and ethical concerns associated with AI and initiate a conversation about how libraries can respond collectively.
The panel will start by providing the overall challenges and concerns of the generative AI use and related problems observed in libraries, highlighting specific examples and issues when users are using generative AIs for information search and vendors increasingly embedding AI functionality into products. We will discuss their impacts and implications to libraries such as the growing need for user education and the resulting growth in librarian’s workload. In exploring issues with the vendor relations and system’s transparency, we will introduce XAI (explainable AI), a recent trend in the AI field, to emphasize the importance of requiring or requesting AI products to embed explainable mechanisms so that they enable the internal process of the product can be traceable and understandable for transparency and trust.
At the end of the session, we will open up a further discussion on the role of libraries in advocating for transparency of system technology, particularly exploring ways for librarians to collectively work,to respond to the industry’s invisible utilization of AI tools as well as promote further understanding of the public.