Jim Craner's blog

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.

We review new research showing that large language models (LLMs), like GPT-4, exhibit biases against dialects and names associated with certain racial groups. One study from the Allen Institute for AI found that these models have a prejudice against speakers of African-American English, potentially impacting decisions in areas like HR, criminal justice, and finance. Additionally, a Bloomberg report demonstrated a similar bias in AI evaluations of resumes with names common to Black and Hispanic people, suggesting that despite efforts to curb bias in AI, it remains a significant issue rooted in the data they're trained on.

Unleashing GPT-4's eye: From recognizing wildflowers to accurately naming books in your library, AI now not only reads text but sees and understands the visual world around us!

Learn about our AI-based document remixing tool featured in our AI Grantwriting course, This feature will be integrated into our in-house AI platform this winter.

My first review of the new OpenAI Dall-E v3 image generator tool, including testing for copyright infringement.

Ever heard of "token limits" in the AI world?  Here's what that means and a bunch of examples!

Ever thought of AI-assisted book clubs? Dive into how ChatGPT can transform your reading group, from sparking dynamic discussions to decoding challenging vocab. Explore the possibilities and pitfalls of this AI integration in libraries!

Banning books is bad. Using inaccurate tools like ChatGPT to justify banning books is bad and shows a spectacular misunderstanding of how these tools work.

At a recent AI library integration workshop, attendees were introduced to Canva's "Magic Design" tool, which auto-generates presentations based on a user's topic description, combining draft text and stock images. While not perfect, this feature offers a promising start for those looking for quick presentation drafts, and users can easily customize the generated slides to better fit their needs.