Yet Another Blog About AI, Kind Of
/April 09, 2024
Did you make it past the title? Were you excited or exasperated thinking about reading yet another blog post about AI? I must admit, I had trepidations writing a blog about AI. I don’t know about you, but my email inbox, my social feeds, and the news outlets I follow regularly are chock-full of stories and comments, ravings and rantings, fearmongering and singing praises about AI. But you know what hasn’t been full of AI? My conversations (face-to-face, either in person or via Zoom, Teams, or the like) with people.
Yes, AI might be mentioned, but inevitably the conversation veers into very human, intelligent, topics. Conversations about ethics, concerns about keeping current with technology, chats about what we’re (society, academia, students) losing while technology gains users, use-cases, and mindshare. For right or wrong, AI seems to have sparked a lot of human interaction.
And most my interactions on the topic of AI have come about the old-fashioned way: connecting with members through conferences, meetings, and messages. As staff, we’re listening… hearing about what others are doing; we’re learning… thinking about ways we can leverage AI to the betterment of the resources we create and the members we serve; and most importantly, we’re elevating… sharing what we hear and know, helping members make connections to others, and developing ways for members to get the word out about what they’re doing. We want to create widespread awareness of the unique and indispensable role our members can play in helping their institutions navigate this new AI-filled and -focused world.
In the interest of sharing, here’s a round-up of some Atla and AI interactions
On the more techy side of things, our Director of Information Systems, Jim Butler, explored LLM’s in his February blog post this year and was ahead of the curve, writing about ChatGPT in his February blog post last year.
More than a year ago, when we saw Steve Jung’s post to Atlantis about the talk he was preparing to give his faculty on AI, we reached out to see if he’d do a webinar for Atla members, and he graciously agreed. He’ll be more than just reprising that content during an in-conference workshop during Atla Annual (see more below).
When I attended the December meeting of CNI, the program was full of AI-related briefings. After such a session, I ran into Clifford Anderson, newly appointed Director of the Yale Divinity Library, who shared with me some of the work he was doing at Vanderbilt with machine learning. He was preparing to present on this work in the session “Building or Buying? AI for the Scholarly Ecosystem” at NISO Plus in February and was kind enough to spend an hour talking with me and several other Atla colleagues about his work and how we might think about machine learning and our work.
In early March, cruising LinkedIn as you do when sitting the car waiting for your child to emerge from an after-school activity, I saw a post from Brady Beard about the project he’s working on “Speaking of the Divine in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: An ALC on Theology and AI.” I reached out to Brady and several of us on staff spent an hour hearing about the project and its framing, ethics, and research approach to AI versus tech usage. During our discussion he said this has “emphasized the necessity of subject searching for him” which was welcome news to our ears. Hopefully Brady will touch a bit more on this, and his project, during the panel presentation he’s participating in at conference (see more on that below).
Reviewing proposals with the Conference Committee in late January, not surprisingly there were several in which AI was prominently featured. We fully expected needing to combine, decline, or find some way to thin the field. However, as we reviewed the proposals, we found it interesting that each proposal explored a unique aspect and approach to theological librarianship and AI. Also, when assigning topical areas for these sessions, our first inclination was to lump them into a “technology” topic, but upon closer inspection we realized we’d be doing a disservice to see them so simplistically, and so you’ll find AI-related sessions within the topics of Information Literacy/Instruction/Reference, Identity of Theological Librarians, and Special Collections. The final program includes six concurrent sessions (available both in person and online), and one post-conference workshop (for in-person attendees only).
- AI in the Seminary Classroom: Equipping Faculty to Address the Pedagogical, Moral, and Ethical Aspects of AI Use for Class Assignments (Listen and Learn)
- How Doomed Are We?: A Philosophical/Theological Consideration of AI/ChatGPT in Relation to Theological Libraries and Theological Education (Panel Presentation)
- AI in the Theological Library Context: Reflections on Information Literacy and the Students We Serve (Conversation Group)
- Practical Uses of Generative AI for the Classroom and the Library (In-Conference Workshop)
- Responsible Use of AI in Theological Librarianship: A Case Study (Listen and Learn)
- AI Meets Astrology: Creating a Digital Edition of Anton Breloch’s 1529 Practica with Transkribus and ChatGPT (Listen and Learn)
- Artificial Intelligence and the Transformation of Research and Learning in Theology Education (Post-conference Workshop)
John mentioned in his March blog post the webinar we co-hosted with ATS last year that helped inspire a whitepaper that the authors then contributed a blog post about last month. Atla staff are working closely with Michael and Chris on some initiatives to help members learn about AI, be leaders in AI at their institutions, and create a community amongst theological librarians to help support each other in AI-related work. We’ll be presenting more about this at ALA on Saturday morning, June 29th and Michael will be leading a post-conference workshop at Atla Annual (see more above).
Finally for this list, the editorial board of Theological Librarianship put out a call for submissions to a forum on AI to be published in the October 2024 issue. This is a great way for folks to share their experiences with and reflections on AI, delve in to the complex aspects of AI and ethics, and explore the complex intersection of AI and theological librarianship.
I’m sure there’s much more happening at the with Atla and AI that isn’t on this list. Don’t wait for us to chance upon discovering what you’re doing, let us know! We’d love to have you author a blog post, or host a webinar, or encourage you to submit and article to the journal, or connect you with others in the community so everyone within Atla can grow and learn together.
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