Artificial intelligence is used in various forms, from transcription services to generative A.I art, deep fakes in pornography and political videos, and solving tricky math equations.
Black Hawk College Reference and Instruction Librarian Atticus Garrison follows A.I developments as part of his job. He gives talks to college staff and students about A.I usage in higher education, including research and ChatGPT writing errors.
"It can feel overwhelming seeing all the AI news, learning all of the different kind of malicious applications of the technology," Garrison said in an interview with WVIK. "And so to kind of reflect that feeling in the air, and I wanted to give a so what at the end of to kind of dissuade those concerns."
In his previous talks, Garrison has noticed that the wider public is more hesitant about the technology, while students at Black Hawk College are more curious and excited about potential positive uses for artificial intelligence.
He notes author Yuval Noah Harari's new book, "Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI," which mentions the creation of the printing press causing upheaval in society. Garrison believes A.I is following the same pathway.
Many are noticing the upheaval, as NPR reported earlier this year that multiple books on Amazon were seemingly written by A.I instead of a person. A North Carolina child psychiatrist was sentenced earlier this year after being caught making child pornography with photos of old classmates including where generative A.I removed the clothes of one person's picture in front of a school bus to a nude photo; many of the victims found out after the man was caught that their online family photos were being used for nefarious reasons.
Garrison notes the advice given earlier this year about recognizing A.I is already dated.
"I mean, we used to be able to say, look at the fingers in the art. AI is really bad at making hands and fingers. It'll give people extra appendages and stuff. That's getting solved," Garrison said. "It's like, 'Oh, look at the text and the images.' Usually, the AI struggles with making text in an image, but it's already getting better at that. So a lot of those quick tips and tricks that we used to be able to say just a few months ago, a lot of the companies have already addressed a lot of those concerns, which makes it more concerning from a disinformation perspective."
Garrison says students have been asking about A.I affecting the job market. He believes businesses may see the technology as a way to cut costs, but they should still include human systems to check for errors.
Earlier this year, a National Eating Disorder Association non-profit let go over 200 employees and volunteers for an A.I chatbot in June. Some employees allege the chatbot move was made during an employee push to unionize the non-profit. The chatbot lasted for only a week as the A.I started to give diet advice, and in some cases, the advice would be detrimental to a person's health.
In a previous WVIK interview, Garrison discussed companies like Google using A.I in their search engines, which has pushed reliable sources further away. He notes that search engines' dysfunction is why libraries are still trusted sources for research.
"I think in some ways the overwhelming barrage of just gunk in Google has made the library a more valuable resource in some ways for when the students come in and they start interacting with either a library database or a catalog," Garrison said. "We don't have any of that in our systems in the library. You just put your search terms in the box and your results show up."
The A.I talk is on Thursday, Oct. 3rd, at the Watts-Midtown branch of the Rock Island Public Library, 2715 30th St, starting at 6 p.m. Garrison says a good portion of the talk will allow for a Q&A session and that no question is dumb as A.I seems to be affecting every facet of human life.
