I'm Wilhelmina Randtke (I use "Mina" for short). I'm interested in this group claiming the role of libraries in artificial intelligence. Machine learning and analyzing large amounts of text started out heavily rooted in my field, which actually is government documents and libraries. Because that's where the text was. Core concepts that libraries are heavily involved in, like metadata, and ontologies, can be used with machine learning to get much better results. Especially, ontologies help to set up algorithms to learn efficiently and accurately from large amounts of text. Also, search engines both designing and using those parallels current artificial intelligence issues. At heart, for decades, there has been a black box element to search engine placement where search engines are already matching on synonyms and determining associations by pattern recognition in the information they indexed. Artificial intelligence ethics and search engine ethics are basically a Venn diagram.
Something I would like to with this group is raise awareness of how libraries already are central to and relevant in artificial intelligence. Libraries teach information literacy, and with new tools for creative work, that teaching is super relevant to these new situations. And libraries have worked in the past with generating metadata and other generative processes, to where machine learning has often built on or dovetailed with library technical services.
Things that I think this group could realistically do is:
Advertise and highlight library related AI events and trainings.
Possibly do a virtual reading group about AI with articles that are 2-3 pages long, depending on if people were interested.
Possibly do a virtual group where members could meet on screensharing do a run through of any upcoming conference presentation about AI, and get feedback from other members.
(Those 2 of reading group and run through and feedback on presentations could possibly be combined, like usually have a reading group but also have a standing offer that any member of the interest group can volunteer to do a run through of an upcoming conference presentation and get feedback from members.)
So... I personally am following the U.S. current activity to develop and solidify a U.S. federal government strategy for artificial intelligence ethics. Some info about that is here https://www.ala.org/rt/sites/ala.org.rt/files/content/SRRT/Newsletters/srrt222.pdf (at page 11). I would be super interested to connect with anyone else who would like to write filings when the U.S. government asks for feedback on specific issues. The turn around time to file comments can be as fast as 30 days, so this would definitely have to be something where it's people who are super committed to hurry up and wait for months at a time, then write together on short notice.
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Wilhelmina Randtke
Head of Libraries Systems and Technologies
Georgia Southern University
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Original Message:
Sent: Aug 16, 2023 09:09 AM
From: Joy DuBose
Subject: Open Discussion Board
Hey everyone, my name is Joy DuBose and I am one of the co-chairs for the AI and Machine Learning Interest Group. My fellow co-chair, Peter Musser, and I have decided to create this open Connect discussion for the interest group. Feel free to introduce yourselves, put out ideas for future discussions or for programming, post questions about situations in your institutions, and any other topics that you think the interest group, or the co-chairs could help with.
If you need or want to contact Peter and I directly, please feel free to do so. We are looking forward to "meeting" and hearing from everyone!
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Joy DuBose
Associate Professor, Special Collections/Projects Cataloger
Mississippi State University
She/Her/Hers
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