Librarian and Educational Technology Specialist Sara Kelley-Mudie spoke about artificial intelligence in school libraries at a webinar for the Independent School Section of the American Association of School Librarian. The presentation aimed to address AI-related concerns including plagiarism, research-based Internet browser inquiries, and best practices for citing AI as a source.

A few takeaways from the webinar include…

• Talking to a chatbot feels like a conversation, but it’s more like a mirror; it wants to reply to your request, even if that means making something up.
• There is a Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom hierarchy; AI is somewhere between Info and Knowledge (but it can look like Knowledge).
• AI can solve problems within the domain it was trained but not outside of it.
• A key component of research/info literacy is knowing who is responsible for the information you’re using and where it came from, which you can’t reliably do with AI-generated content.
• Students need to hear about AI and ethics/bias. The algorithmic bias we’re concerned about in other places is baked into the system with AI. The information is not unbiased, but the biases can be harder to detect because the sources are obscured.