What Are We Missing? Libraries and AI
Computers In Libraries 2025. Leslie Weir and Claire McGuire on stage with Erik Boekesteijn on the video link, Washington, DC. CC-BY
Updated March 30, 2025 at 4:27pm EST.
(Notes and references are at the bottom of the post.)
What Are We Missing? Libraries and AI? (Google Slides or pdf) was my short provocation for the March 27th Computers in Libraries keynote panel.
I made the following 5 assertions regarding the library sector’s response to AI.
At the heart of librarianship is a Jeffersonian/Franklinian bond between a librarian and a citizen.*
This bond serves a profound purpose in democracy & human rights.AI, developed by/for narrow, private/governmental interests, drives a wedge between librarian, citizen, and democracy.
We are in the midst of a cultural revolution, not yet usefully recognized by public intellectuals, that cuts at the heart of our Jeffersonian/Franklinian bond. AI is one of the drivers of, and characters in, this revolution.We are only investigating a small subset of AI’s scope and impact.
As we try to understand the impact of AI on our societal purpose, we are making a “thinking error” that restricts our vision: We are primarily considering AI as an assistive technology that helps with our standard modus operandi, which is only a small subset of AI's consequences for librarianship and democracy.We are misjudging the speed of AI’s emergence and the intentions of its primary owners.
AI is emerging fast — more quickly than institutions can typically react; Big Tech has unprecedented power/wealth and a poor track record vis-a-vis culture, democracy, and human rights.We have an obligation to intervene on behalf of our Jeffersonian/Franklinian purpose.
We have the nascent skills, community, and mandate to act, as well as a history of involvement in issues of societal importance.
Action is critically important. See the link below for more info about a "23 Things" for AI.
* For readers not steeped in the lore of American librarianship, Benjamin Franklin is credited as the inventor of the free lending library. Thomas Jefferson advanced the idea that a well-educated and informed populace was essential for the success of a democratic republic.)
Notes and references
Program
Program description (CIL 2025 website), featuring Claire McGuire (IFLA), Leslie Weir (Director of Libraries and Archives Canada and president elect of IFLA), Erik Boekesteijn (National Library of the Netherlands), and me.
Get involved — 23 Things
Climate Things website — a temporary source of information for a possible 23 AI Things project.
Sign up for a newsletter and/or get in touch about 23 AI Things / 23 Climate Things, or anything else… (link to climatethings.org “contact us” and newsletter sign-up form)
My Slides
What Are We Missing About AI? (Google Slides or pdf)
References for the slides
Matrix Diagram (above)
This is the chart I showed to illustrate how we’re primarily talking about AI as an “assistive” technology — basically as an individual/office productivity tool, while more-or-less ignoring AI that has a higher level of cognitive ability/utility or a broader scope of societal impact. Here’s the full chart in various manifestations on Google Sheets.
I used the following resources to come up with these hierarchies,Ben Dickson, "The Different Types of AI: From Assisted to Superintelligence," VentureBeat, May 19, 2023. https://venturebeat.com/ai/the-different-types-of-ai-from-assisted-to-superintelligence/
"Types of Artificial Intelligence," Tpoint Tech, accessed February 27, 2025. This resource includes a categorization of AI based on functionalities like reactive machines, limited memory, theory of mind, and self-awareness. https://www.javatpoint.com/types-of-artificial-intelligence
Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (4th Edition) (Pearson, 2020). This textbook, apparently a classic, discusses different levels of AI based on their capabilities, including distinctions between narrow AI, general AI, and superintelligence. Google Books: https://books.google.com/books/about/Artificial_Intelligence.html?id=Na8rAAAAQBAJ
Other works referenced and cited
Yuval Harari, Nexus (2024). (Author’s site.)
Makes a case for the profound “differentness” of AI the role it will play in shaping how we think, create communities, and discern “truth.”Shoshana Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism (2018). (Wikipedia page for the book.)
A searing description of the degree to which big tech seeks to usurp the public sphere and the public’s “right to the future tense.” This is a monumental work.Katie Conger and Ryan Mac (NY Times reporters), Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter (2024). (Wikipedia page for the book.)
Documents, in day-by-day detail, Musk’s conduct and decision making. Chilling.Donella Meadows, Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System (1999). (PDF)
One of the most important (and best written!) essays I’ve ever read. Meadows is one of the founders of systems thinking.The Web We Want, Dealing with the Dark Side of Social Media (my presentation from 2019, which delves into the sins of corporate social media.)
Society is more than a Bazaar (a list I put together in 2018 showing 30 links/references and quotes about the dark side of social media and the transgressions of the big platform owners).
Enshittification, Cory Doctorow’s analysis of “platform rot” — why commercial platforms like Amazon, Facebook/Instagram, and TikTok get worse over time. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification, and Cory Doctorow’s original article, a must-read: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
Opinion: What Elon Musk Wants. Interview with Kira Swisher. Ezra Klein Show, New York Times, March 7, 2025. (Soft paywall, also available on YouTube.) Very good for its insights about the thought process and motivation of Silicon Valley’s tech elites.
Opinion: The Government Knows AGI Is Coming. (Soft paywall.) Ezra Klein, New York Times, March 4, 2025.
Valuable for its sober insistence that artificial general intelligence will arrive in the next 3 years, during the Trump administration.Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono (1985). (Wikipedia page for the book.) Very useful (and beautifully, unusually written) treatise on improving thinking in groups.
How to Think Like a Philosopher by Julian Baggini (2023). (U Chicago Press.) I found this very useful, and delightful to read, regarding how to think more clearly about difficult ideas (and how to recognize and intervene when thinking mistakes are made).
Anything else? Feel free to ask!! (Link to my contact me page.)
Unprecedented concentration of power
Not a citizenry (The Age of Surveillance Capitalism)
Unnecessarily Beautiful Spaces for Young Minds on Fire
Part of the 826 Valencia Tenderloin District space in San Francisco
An inspired learning environment sets the imagination on fire and makes a young person feel loved. This is true: they feel loved, sensing the encompassing affection and respect that went into the creation of that learning space. And with beauty all around them, they will want to make beautiful things, too.
A very small substance
First of all, it's costly. If you want want to write a truthful account of anything you need to research, you need to gather evidence, to fact check, to analyze. That's very costly in terms of time and money and effort. Fiction is very cheap. You just write the first things that comes to your mind.
The truth is also often very complicated because reality is complicated, whereas fiction can be made as simple as you would like it to be, and people prefer usually simple stories.
And finally the truth can be painful. Whether the truth about us personally — my relationships, what I've done to other people, to myself or entire nations or cultures — whereas fiction, you can you can make it as attractive, as flattering, as you would like it to be.
So in this competition between truth, and fiction, and fantasy, truth is at a huge disadvantage.
If you just flood the world with information most information will not be the truth, and in this ocean of information if you don't give the truth some help, some edge, the truth tends to sink to the bottom, not rise to the top.
Regarding the obstacles faced by young activists
Regarding the role of museums in climate protests
Museum of Solutions wins international Hands On! Children In Museums Award
Montage of program posters from the Museum of Solutions.
My former home, The Museum of Solutions, Mumbai (MuSo) has won the prestigious international Hands On! Children in Museums Award for 2024.
Congratulations to the MuSo team; founder Tanvi Jindal, the JSW Foundation and supporters — and the extraordinary community of young people MuSo is privileged to serve. <3
The Hands On! award has been given annually since 2011 by the European Museum Academy and the Hands On! International Association of Children in Museums to recognize excellence and innovation in children's museums "through interactive exhibits, educational programs, or inclusive design...that inspire curiosity, learning, and a sense of wonder in young minds."
In bestowing this award, the judges wrote — quite poignantly,
“The different zones on each floor address issues and ideas that are contemporary, bold and emotional. MuSo is not just about exhibits, it is about unlocking the potential within every child to change the world, using exhibitions, educational activities and public programmes to promote learning, enjoyment, reflection, creativity and knowledge. MuSo asks kids to put their ideas into practice, to make projects, finding strategies and solutions, and to realise them.”
The citation continues,
"MuSo is revolutionary, but its ethos is a model for many other countries […] MuSo has a strong belief in the power of children and that children are the changemakers. The young visitors are encouraged and empowered to think for themselves and to find methods and solutions, looking to the future, to make a better world for their communities. The museum does exceptional work, thanks to its extraordinarily committed staff. In the long run, MuSo contributes to raising responsible members of society. Who else but a children’s museum can carry out this educational task in such a holistic way?"
I'm a bit overwhelmed by the judges' words! This feels like what MuSo set out to do so many years ago and yet it still seems bold and aspirational to me, full of challenges and unknowns as well as deep significance.
(I am remembering a story MuSo's Abhik Bhattacherji told me months ago when I was still in Mumbai. As I recall, he had asked an elderly woman in the museum's library — LiSo, the Library of Solutions — how she was enjoying her visit and she burst into tears. She told him that she had grown up in great poverty, and she never imagined that in her lifetime she would see her two young grandchildren happily reading books together in such a beautiful, joyous, purposeful space.
Almost every day brought a story like that, and almost every day brought a new glimpse of just how deeply significant and impactful [and necessary!] this new kind of museum can be. Let's have many more of them. Young people, and our collective future, deserve no less.)
CC-BY. September 2024
Galactic-sized responsibility
References for European Heritage Hub Forum, Bucharest
Just scrapping together a quick list of references for my talk today at the European Cultural Heritage Summit in Bucharest.
This was an event organized by the Europeana Foundation and the European Heritage Hub in association with Europa Nostra.
The topic was an exploration of the role of digital cultural heritage in the triple transition of Europe (digital, green, and social).
My role was to present a short provocation advocating for the daring, urgent use of cultural infrastructure to catalyze global effort - - actual action - - towards the climate emergency and the SDGs.
Links and references:
About the program (Monday, October 7), European Heritage Hub Forum: Championing a Responsible Digital Transition for and with Cultural Heritage.
Link to converence livestream recording (tbd)
Slides from my provocation (Google slides)
Relevant projects, works / ideas cited
On the opening of the Museum of Solutions, Mumbai (MuSo homepage)
Culture, Activism, and The Big Frikin’ Wall (MuseumNext interview, 2022)
A Concept of Digitality for Cultural Climate Action (Slides from MuseumNext and Computers in Libraries, 2022)
Video and slides/links for NEMO webinar, Create Dangerously: Museums in the Age of Action (2022)
Report: On Thin Ice: Disproportionate Responses to Climate Change Protesters in Democratic Countries (September 2024)
Think Big, Start Small, Move Fast (my pptx on Google Drive, or on SlideShare)
Examples of projects on the other side of the Big Frickin’ Wall
Leiden European City of Science 2022 (365 days of programs in the community)
NEMO - Network of European Museum Organizations (activity around climate action, political action, etc)
List of references (good Digital stuff) prepared for European City of Science (40+ projects in 4 blog posts starting here)
National Geographic Society’s pivot toward environmental/social impact reporting (I don’t have a reference for this, but as I recall the editors decided to pivot to a more activist voice as a result of the programs and panels that took place during the Society’s 100th anniversary in 1988.)
Hip Hop Festival, Maramureş History & Archaeology Museum
https://hiphopkulture.ro/evenimente/roots-festival-de-cultura-urbana-2024-baia-mare/
https://www.directmm.ro/comunitate/cultura-urbana-la-muzeul-de-istorie-maramures-in-premiera-va-avea-loc-concert-special-de-hip-hop-in-incinta-institutiei-cand-are-loc-recitalul/
https://www.directmm.ro/comunitate/cultura-urbana-la-muzeul-de-istorie-maramures-in-premiera-s-a-organizat-un-concert-special-de-hip-hop-fondurile-pentru-achizitia-de-rechizite/
https://www.maramuresmuzeu.ro/
Green Council, Șirna Communal Library, Prahova County, Romania
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC1CC4lhEmQ
Slides: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/irna-public-library-romaniapdf/257829154
https://www.ifla.org/events/ifla-ensulib-webinar-series-sirna-public-library-from-romania/
The technology they like, no matter the social cost
Trump Superstore, outside Knoxville, Tennessee. September 18, 2024. CC-BY
Huxley and Orwell
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.