Type of Presentation

Individual paper/presentation

Conference Strand

Critical Literacy

Target Audience

Higher Education

Second Target Audience

Higher Education

Relevance

This proposal aims to inspire librarians to engage with new advancements made in related fields that can help equip them with the knowledge and confidence to address critical topics related to AI technologies in their instruction that go beyond navigating these technologies and put instructors and students in the drivers' seat of technological change.

Proposal

Artificial intelligence systems are increasingly being sold to the public as transformative, world-changing, life-improving advancements in human evolution. Information literacy librarians have and will continue to play an instrumental role in challenging and critiquing new technological “advancements” that make their way into the lives and practices of their organizations and communities. However, librarians may be underutilizing the important skills they hold in evaluating complex information sources and systems when helping their communities critically respond to new tools like those powered by artificial intelligence. While emphasizing skills related to source evaluation, identifying algorithmic bias, and critically examining the economic context of information creation are vital advancements in instruction librarianship, more must be done to move past the reactionary state librarians often find themselves in. In order to truly embrace a critical stance towards “disruptive” technological systems, we must move past fixating on particular technological expressions and look more deeply at the roots of these expressions in oppressive knowledge-making, policy-creating, and economic systems. Doing so can empower librarians to take an active role in reframing and resisting the capitalist, colonizing origins of the technology industry and the discourses in which they engage to disempower our communities an enroll them as part of their consumer base. This session will introduce instruction librarians to important conceptual advancements in the field of critical technology and information studies and review their practical import for various aspects of information literacy that allow us to move from “navigating” AI technologies to shaping them, their use, and their impact.

Presentation Description

This presentation aims to inspire librarians to engage with new advancements made in critical technology and information studies that can help equip them with the knowledge and confidence to address critical topics related to AI technologies in their instruction that go beyond navigating these technologies and put instructors and students in the drivers' seat of technological change.

Keywords

artificial intelligence, technological innovation, critical technology studies, empowerment, AI origins

Publication Type and Release Option

Presentation (Open Access)

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

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Apr 19th, 2:25 PM Apr 19th, 3:10 PM

Beyond Navigating: Empowering Ourselves and Our Communities through Critical Technology and Information Research

Artificial intelligence systems are increasingly being sold to the public as transformative, world-changing, life-improving advancements in human evolution. Information literacy librarians have and will continue to play an instrumental role in challenging and critiquing new technological “advancements” that make their way into the lives and practices of their organizations and communities. However, librarians may be underutilizing the important skills they hold in evaluating complex information sources and systems when helping their communities critically respond to new tools like those powered by artificial intelligence. While emphasizing skills related to source evaluation, identifying algorithmic bias, and critically examining the economic context of information creation are vital advancements in instruction librarianship, more must be done to move past the reactionary state librarians often find themselves in. In order to truly embrace a critical stance towards “disruptive” technological systems, we must move past fixating on particular technological expressions and look more deeply at the roots of these expressions in oppressive knowledge-making, policy-creating, and economic systems. Doing so can empower librarians to take an active role in reframing and resisting the capitalist, colonizing origins of the technology industry and the discourses in which they engage to disempower our communities an enroll them as part of their consumer base. This session will introduce instruction librarians to important conceptual advancements in the field of critical technology and information studies and review their practical import for various aspects of information literacy that allow us to move from “navigating” AI technologies to shaping them, their use, and their impact.