IN DEPTH
What is the potential impact of libraries on AI?
Tech-focused conference Libraries Rewired takes place on 10 November at London’s Code Node. Machine Learning Librarian at Hugging Face Daniel van Strien will be joining Digital Curator at the British Library Mia Ridge for a session on Harnessing AI and Machine Learning. Here Daniel looks at the relationship between libraries, AI and machine learn- ing and how to ensure the technology delivers for your service. Find out more about Libraries Rewired at
www.librariesrewired.org.uk.
ALMOST every industry asks, “How will artificial intelligence impact us?” Libraries (and related institutions) are also frequently asking this question. Indeed, a recent report commissioned by CILIP was titled The impact of AI, machine learning, automation and robotics on the information profes- sions (
www.cilip.org.uk/researchreport). That libraries are grappling with the impact of AI on the sector is not so surpris- ing when we think about what people claim AI, particularly Large Language Models, can provide, namely a way to access high-qual- ity information efficiently. This is also one of the primary goals of many libraries and librarians. As a result, librarians might worry that this new technology has the potential to make their work less relevant or even make it obsolete altogether. However, I believe there are many areas where infor- mation professionals can take a more pro- active stance in determining where and how machine learning might potentially enhance the work of libraries, as well as taking a more active role in using and developing appropriate machine learning based sys- tems. Whilst libraries are right to ask what is the impact of AI on libraries, they should
October-November 2023
Daniel van Strien is a Machine Learning Librarian at Hugging Face (
https://huggingface.co).
also be turning this question around and asking: “What is the potential impact of libraries on AI?”
What can AI do?
A lot of the recent excitement about AI has been focused on one branch of AI: generative AI. Generative AI includes tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney. As the name suggests, Generative AI refers to systems that generate open-ended outputs, often based on an input prompt. For example, when you ask ChatGPT, “What is the role of libraries?” you are providing a ‘prompt’, in this case, a sequence of words. The objective of a generative system is to continue to generate text based on this initial text. One of the appeals of generative systems is the flexibility they
INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL 17
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
