‘One reason we are sensitive about genAI (generative AI) is because knowledge and language are central to our sense of ourselves and to the institutions which are important to us. Accordingly, application of genAI raises major questions across the cultural, scholarly and civic contexts that are important to libraries. In this context, I like Alison Gopnik’s characterization of genAI as a cultural technology. Cultural technologies, in her terms, provide ways of communicating information between groups of people. Examples, she suggests, are “writing, print, libraries, internet search engines or even language itself.” She goes on to argue that asking whether an LLM is intelligent or knows about the world is “like asking whether the University of California’s library is intelligent or whether a Google search ‘knows’ the answer to your questions.” She reminds us that previous cultural technologies also caused concerns, referencing Socrates’ thoughts about the effect of writing on our ability to remember and as a potential spreader of misinformation.And she also notes that past cultural technologies “required new norms, rules, laws and institutions to make sure that the good outweighs the ill, from shaming liars and honoring truth-tellers to inventing fact-checkers, librarians, libel laws and privacy regulations.”’
Link: https://issuu.com/against-the-grain/docs/june_2024_v36-3/22
AI Update 