Regarding no. 2, I feel like this is an interesting write up
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1045339.1045340 "Artificial Intelligence
Meets Natural Stupidity".  It is about how naming a piece of software by
its purpose, for example, naming a program "intelligence" or "understand"
or "think" or "comprehend" causes people to project their understanding of
the term onto the software, including the programmers who wrote it, and
then people believe reality achieved the intent of the name rather than
understanding clearly what the software actually does.  It suggests that
naming pieces of software things like "G0308" while in development, then
when finalized to change the name to what the release of software actually
does, rather than name it by the intended goal at the start of the project,
would reduce misunderstandings.

"Artificial intelligence" is a buzzword right now, and mostly the current
buzz is referring to the similar concepts to "big data" more than 10 years
ago.  Also, probably if it were called "human task simulation" as a field,
then a field named that might not have the same traction and potential to
be a buzzword.

Best,
-Wilhelmina


Wilhelmina Randtke
Head of Libraries Technologies and Systems
Zach S. Henderson Library
1400 Southern Dr.
Statesboro, GA, 30458
(912) 478-5035
[log in to unmask]




On Thu, Feb 29, 2024 at 3:07 PM Eric Lease Morgan <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> On Feb 26, 2024, at 4:05 PM, Eric Lease Morgan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Who out here in Code4Lib Land is practicing with either one or both of
> the following things: 1) fine-tuning large-language models, or 2)
> retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). If there is somebody out there, then
> I'd love to chat...
>
>
> Many things.
>
>   1. First of all, I'm happy there were a number of different replies. I
> learned something.
>
>   2. Second, I believe the phrase "artificial intelligence" (AI) is poor
> choice of words if not a misnomer. What is "intelligence" anyway, and why
> should I give any credence to fake intelligence? Is the ability to do
> mathematics very quickly intelligent? Is the ability to store and retrieve
> vast amounts of information intelligent? I say not but some people call
> such things "smart". AI has ebbed & flowed over the course of computing
> history. In the 1990's AI was implemented as "expert systems". We are
> experiencing an ebb.
>
>   3. Third, computer technology evolves. Think of the all the computer
> technology evolutions libraries have experienced. Cards to MARC. MARC to
> OPAC. Print indexes to indexes on CD-ROMS. Field searching to free text
> searching with relevancy ranking. Every time these things happen, some
> blindly embrace the evolution, some are skeptical, and some believe the
> evolution is a fad. This is natural. Generative AI is just another example;
> the current flavor of AI is a mash-up of natural language processing, image
> processing, and data science all on steroids.
>
>   4. Fourth, with the incarnation of generative AI, for the first time in
> my life, I feel threatened by a computer. A computer can do some of my job.
> It can write software. It can summarize text. It can classify text. It can
> create MARC records. Yikes!?
>
>   5. Fifth, I found a few places to discuss AI in libraries. First of all
> there is the AI4LAM Slack channel, and there are couple of similar
> sub-channels in the Code4Lib Slack (#ai-dl-ml and #generative-ai).
>
>   6. Sixth, a few projects where brought to my attention, and of
> particular interest to me were WARC-GPT, Talpa, and Daybooks of Susan B.
> Anthony. [1, 2, 3] In each of these cases the developers: 1) had a
> collection, 2) used large-language model technology to index/analyze the
> content, 3) provided a mechanism to query the collection/analysis, and 4)
> returned a useful result.
>
> Finally, I see generative AI as a tool, and just like any other tool -- a
> hammer, for example -- one needs to practice in order to use it
> effectively. My toolbox is getting bigger.
>
>
> Links
>
> [1] WARC-GPT - https://github.com/harvard-lil/warc-gpt
> [2] Talpa - https://www.talpa.ai/
> [3] Daybooks of Susan B. Anthony -
> https://thisismattmiller.com/post/using-gpt-on-library-collections/
>
> --
> Eric Morgan <[log in to unmask]>
> Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship
> Hesburgh Libraries
> University of Notre Dame