Beyond Books: Can we opt out of the artificial intelligence era?

As I get closer to retirement eligibility, I keep thinking about friends and former coworkers who retired when they felt they couldn’t keep up anymore. I don’t mean physically, but technologically:

Like when computers replaced the card catalog;

Like when reference went online;

Like when social media took over;

Like when everything became “smart.”

Each advancement seems to push out a generation of institutional knowledge. At least, that’s been my anecdotal observation.

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I’m wondering if Artificial Intelligence is that inflection point for me. I mean, I’m keeping up, but at what point do I stop trying? It would be easy to frame that as giving up, but perhaps it’s really a return to something simpler.

I’m not advocating for Luddism, but I am thinking differently about what’s expected of libraries. I don’t think AI or robotics will ever fully replace librarianship, but do humans eventually just become the overseers? If so, that should free us up, right? But free us up for what—and with what? What becomes currency when no one is working? Time? Goodwill?

Setting aside the environmental and ethical considerations for a moment: I use AI often. I rely on spellcheck and punctuation tools. Lately, it’s been my first reader, my editor. But that’s when I choose to engage with the technology.

What has changed in the last few years is a capitulation of choice.

AI is now embedded in everything. Do a Google search, and the first results are AI-generated. Submit a résumé, and it may be scanned by AI to determine your qualifications. AI is in your phone. It shapes your social media feeds. It tracks what you like, what you buy, and what you might want next.

AI is ubiquitous, and we’ve largely lost control over our personal data, data that must live somewhere, usually stored in vast, energy- and water- intensive server farms. At some point, we should be asking: when do we regain control of it?I know that if I retired tomorrow, it wouldn’t solve the AI or data-center problem; it wouldn’t even remove me from it. I would still shop. I’d still discover new music through a streaming service that has tracked my preferences for the past decade. Sometimes that’s helpful. But sometimes, I just want to opt out. That’s what’s missing.

No, I don’t think AI will make librarians irrelevant. Computers didn’t make paper obsolete, but they did replace typewriters. Typewriters couldn’t replace pens and pencils, but they did replace a lot of long-form handwriting. But those advances didn’t replace human creativity. They are merely tools. AI, too, is a tool, but it’s forced on us like a panacea. There has to be creativity and puzzling out the right word for the occasion. Pick up a dictionary. Use a thesaurus. Think a little bit harder.

So far, nothing has really replaced paper. We use more of it than ever and someone still has to sort it, organize it, catalog it. Artificial Intelligence may be able to simulate that work in the ether, but it hasn’t replaced the physical reality of a shelf… at least not yet.

James Hill is the Executive Director of the Chillicothe and Ross County Library and a PhD student at Antioch University studying leadership and change. He can be reached at jhill@crpcl.org.

This article originally appeared on Chillicothe Gazette: Beyond Books: AI doesn't make librarians irrelevant