The archivist has been transformed, accordingly, from passive curator to active appraiser to societal mediator to community facilitator. The focus of archival thinking has moved from evidence to memory to identity and community, as the broader intellectual currents have changed from premodern to modern to postmodern to contemporary. Community archiving and digital realities offer possibilities for healing these disruptive and sometimes conflicting discourses within our profession.
The newest form these “digital realities” have taken is Artificial Intelligence (AI), an exacting tool that is helping to offload non-human tasks. Ideally, greater focus can be redirected toward the humanness of our communities, into leisure activities and educational forums for personal and community growth. There will be an expanding need for meaningful community experiences as free time increases through the outmoding of jobs that no longer need humans to accomplish them. This ideal is not all Pepperland; there be Blue Meanies here too. Unfortunately, the genie that is AI has already left her bottle and is granting wishes willy-nilly.
There will be a need for designing alternative, creative workflows to help in building community events and paths for individual self-improvement. In the past, self-directed community-based activities were primarily practiced by artists and artisans, farmers and contemplatives, both spiritual and philosophic, in media physical, in mediums electric. When more people are freed from the existential strictures of their day-to-day survival needs, the practice of integrating life and imagination, apart from work for work’s sake, will be crucial. With the freedom at scale that AI can enable, the influence of creative innovation won’t be restricted to the unworried wealthy and the starving artists, and that freedom will change the meaning of what is expressed. Hopefully, the proliferation of creative self- and community-based workflows can inform lifestyles that help ameliorate AI’s deleterious effects.
As Michael Stephens said in his lecture for Hyperlinked Communities, “Everything you do should involve your users every step of the way.” AI’s shocking gains in the intelligence and fluidity of information delivery are already making it much easier to connect with current and potential users to discover their needs and move forward as a humane community that becomes its own motile third place of pure imagination.
@tbgoodwillie, the possibility that AI can free up time for creative pursuits and community engagement is a cool one, although I wonder how equally that freedom will be distributed. The technology may eliminate some tasks, but it also raises questions about who really benefits and, of course, whose creative work (or otherwise) is used to “train” these systems. And whose voices will remain underrepresented in all of this? Libraries must be at the forefront of navigating these kinds of tensions and gaps. The word “efficiency” carries a lot of question marks. Good post!
That’s what I keep finding myself asking–what are AI users doing with their newly found free time? Especially at the environmental cost of using AI.
I feel like we need a carbon offset program for AI use. Or, at least, more thoughtfulness, at both the individual and the systemwide levels.
@emilyelizabeth That freed-up time will line up real nice with the Hyperlinked Library model.
&I agree, Emily! Like we have organic food, we need Green AI.
@collectingtjp When I was an alternative kid in the ’80s, I bought a “Kill Your Television” bumper sticker for my microbus, but I couldn’t bring myself to put it on my bumper. I was a TV lover. The programming sucked, but I could see even its abstract off-channel fuzz as beautiful, not to mention Scooby-Doo. My AI boosterism comes from that same place. We need a clean AI: green, ethically grounded, and bounded.
What you say is true. AI-enabled work in a pre-physical-automation environment will only free up the time of (or unemploy?) middle-class tech and office workers, who are already in a privileged place in society. Without legislated and enforced ethical standards for training, megacorp taxation, fair compensation for IP (not unlike the LIS model), real inclusion of the communities whose work and voices are being scraped, and UBI, the profit will still coagulate beneath the bellies of the billionaire dragons on their piles of unspendable gold. Sadly, I think we in LIS will be left to do the dirty work. It’s definitely long past time to stop feeding the dragons their maidens…
@tbgoodwillie your reply post put a smile on my face- I had a KYT sticker too. And yes, I watched way too much television!
I hope that, as you say, a “clean AI: green, ethically grounded, and bounded,” is possible. It’s clear that money, ethics, and power don’t often align in favor of people, the environment, or many other precious things. I would put both a KYT and a KYAI sticker on my bumper! 📺