Using AI to Determine the Political Point of View of Books

In this blog post, we discuss experimenting with AI, specifically ChatGPT, to determine the political leanings of books, hoping to maintain diversity in library collections without contributing to book bans. We share our initial test with both distinctly political and neutral books to see if the AI can accurately identify their perspectives, and the results are encouraging. Moving forward, we plan to challenge the AI with newer and less straightforward titles, exploring how this technology can help us keep our libraries inclusive and welcoming.

Research: ChatGPT and Readers Advisory

In our Library AI workshops, we mention the potential of AI-based tools like ChatGPT to assist with library services like Readers Advisory ("RA"). However, until recently, we only had anecdotal examples of how ChatGPT performed at this task.

So, we've spent some time lately figuring out how to methodically explore ChatGPT's capability as an RA tool.  It's slow going -- we've just dipped our toe in the water, so to speak -- but we see some great potential!