ASSIGNMENT X: AI and the Hyperlinked Library: Choosing a Star Trek Future Over a Star Wars Future.

In San José State University’s INFO 287, “The Hyperlinked Library,” taught by Professor X (Michael Stephens), artificial intelligence can be understood as more than a new tool. It marks a technological inflection point that resembles a choice between two science-fiction futures. A Star Trek future imagines technology expanding knowledge, translation, access, exploration, and human flourishing. A Star Wars future shows advanced systems serving surveillance, inequality, militarization, and concentrated power. The hyperlinked library model helps librarians ask which future we are building. It calls for service that is transparent, participatory, playful, user-centered, and human while remaining grounded in core library values (Stephens, n.d.). From that perspective, AI should not replace librarians; it should help libraries extend connection, learning, and access when guided by human judgment and community need (American Library Association, 2025).

AI as a Hyperlinked Library Tool

AI can support the hyperlinked library by improving discovery. Search tools, recommendation systems, and conversational assistants can help users locate books, articles, archives, and digital resources more efficiently. Discovery is not only about finding an item; it is about making meaningful connections across formats, communities, and ideas (Stephens, 2014). AI can support natural-language searching, suggest related topics, summarize long documents, and help users refine broad questions into researchable inquiries. In technical services, it can assist with metadata, subject tagging, transcription, translation, and categorization, making hidden collections more visible (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, 2020).

AI can also expand service beyond the building, aligning with Stephens’ emphasis on serving users where they are (Stephens, 2014). Chatbots may answer basic questions after hours, while accessibility tools can create captions, translate languages, or support alternative formats. AI can help create tutorials, offer reading recommendations, research guides, and personalized learning support. For staff, it may reduce repetitive work such as drafting announcements or organizing program data, freeing librarians for relationship-building, instruction, outreach, and reflection (American Libraries Magazine, 2024).

Risks, Values, and Transparency

A hyperlinked approach also requires transparency about AI’s limits. Generative AI may produce inaccurate information, invented citations, or biased responses. Because AI systems depend on large amounts of data, they can create privacy risks when users enter personal, academic, legal, or community information into commercial tools. Algorithms can also reinforce inequalities if training data reflects historical exclusions. Libraries must consider copyright, vendor transparency, environmental costs, and whether AI tools are available to all patrons or only to those with money, devices, and technical confidence (American Library Association, 2025; International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, 2020).

The Star Wars side of the metaphor reminds us that technology does not automatically create justice. A library AI tool could appear helpful while collecting user data, narrowing search results, reinforcing bias, or strengthening commercial platforms. Without accountability, AI can become less like a public bridge and more like a gatekeeper. For libraries committed to the hyperlinked model, a tool designed for connection could instead undermine trust, privacy, and intellectual freedom.

The Librarian as Human Link

The librarian’s role in an AI-rich environment is to become the human link between technology, information, and community. Librarians can evaluate tools, test outputs, protect patron privacy, and advocate for systems that support intellectual freedom. They can teach AI literacy in the spirit of information literacy by helping people ask better questions, compare sources, recognize bias, cite responsibly, and understand a tool’s limits (American Library Association, 2025; International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, 2020). Patrons will need guidance on when AI is useful, when it is risky, and when a human expert, primary source, or peer-reviewed source is essential.

This role fits the Hyperlinked Library course. Librarians collaborating with AI should remain participatory by inviting users to shape services and give feedback. They should be playful and experimental without assuming every innovation is beneficial. They should be user-centered, asking whether AI solves a real community problem. Most importantly, they should remain human. AI can generate responses, but it cannot replace empathy, local knowledge, professional ethics, or trust built through sustained service (Stephens, n.d.).

The Star Trek side offers the “hopeful possibility”. In that version, AI is not the captain; it is shared infrastructure that helps people communicate, discover, create, and solve problems together. Librarians remain ethical navigators, helping patrons question AI’s answers, using AI in ways that support curiosity and community rather than dependency or control.

Sustainable AI and the Physical Cloud

Choosing the Star Trek path also means recognizing that AI is not weightless or purely virtual. Every chatbot exchange, image generation, or recommendation depends on data centers that require electricity, cooling, land, water, chips, and supply chains. The “cloud” is physical infrastructure. If libraries adopt AI without asking about environmental costs, they risk supporting a Star Wars version of progress: powerful systems that appear invisible while shifting energy burdens, water stress, and environmental impacts on communities (International Energy Agency, 2025).

Sustainable AI should include renewable energy, efficient design, and responsible water use. Data centers can reduce carbon impacts by matching operations with wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, or other carbon-free energy when and where computing occurs (International Energy Agency, 2025). They can also improve server utilization, reuse heat, adopt efficient chips, and choose cooling systems suited to local climates. In water-stressed regions, operators should avoid unnecessary freshwater use, rely on recycled or reclaimed water where possible, use closed-loop or direct-to-chip cooling, and publicly report water consumption and replenishment (Environmental and Energy Study Institute, 2025). For libraries, AI literacy should include environmental literacy by asking vendors where data is processed, what energy powers it, how water is used, and whether sustainability claims are measurable.

Conclusion

AI will likely become a regular part of library work, but its value depends on responsible use. Through Stephens’ hyperlinked library model, the central question is whether libraries can help society choose the Star Trek path over the Star Wars one (Stephens, n.d.). AI is most useful when it strengthens connection rather than replacing it. Libraries can use AI to improve discovery, accessibility, efficiency, and learning while guarding against misinformation, surveillance, bias, unequal access, and unsustainable infrastructure (American Library Association, 2025; International Energy Agency, 2025). The librarian’s role expands from information guide to AI educator, evaluator, community advocate, environmental questioner, and ethical partner. By defending privacy, equity, intellectual freedom, sustainability, curiosity, and human connection, librarians can help communities benefit from AI without losing the heart of librarianship.

References

American Library Association. (2025, June 11). Libraries’ opportunity to shape how AI transforms society.

American Libraries Magazine. (2024, March 1). Reading between the bots: Where librarianship is headed in the age of AI.

International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. (2020). IFLA statement on libraries and artificial intelligence.

International Energy Agency. (2025). Energy and AI.

Environmental and Energy Study Institute. (2025, June 25). Data centers and water consumption.

Stephens, M. (n.d.). Module 3: The hyperlinked library model. INFO 287: The Hyperlinked Library, San José State University School of Information.

Stephens, M. (2014). Serving the user when and where they are: Hyperlinked libraries.