Information Creation as a Process

As with any new technology, there will be people who are hesitant adopters. In the early 2000s many librarians were skeptical of students using Wikipedia. Now we realize that we need to be instructing students about the proper use of Wikipedia, rather than banning it. One of the dispositions for the Information Creation as a Process frame states that “learners who are developing their information literate abilities accept the ambiguity surrounding the potential value of information creation expressed in emerging formats or modes.”7 To us, this is direct confirmation that ChatGPT has a place in the library instruction classroom, both for its use in instruction and for discussion with students. Librarians should absolutely be talking about it with students, trying it out, and discovering together what those problems and promises are. In particular, students should be made aware of the machine learning process: tools like ChatGPT are trained on large amounts of textual data in an iterative process, whereby it “learns” from this data over time. This process is very similar to how information literate scholars learn, research, create, write, and refine their ideas over time, as presented in this frame. The frame challenges us that “the dynamic nature of information creation and dissemination requires ongoing attention to understand evolving creation processes.”8 A technology columnist for The New York Times advised his readers along the same lines: “today’s students will graduate into a world full of generative A.I. programs. They’ll need to know their way around these tools—their strengths and weaknesses, their hallmarks and blind spots—in order to work alongside them. To be good citizens, they’ll need hands-on experience to understand how this type of A.I. works, what types of bias it contains, and how it can be misused and weaponized.”9 It is imperative librarians bring students to that attention about the process of creating information through ChatGPT and similar AI models.

It is just as important to define concepts as it is to identify them. For example, diversity will actually mean different things in different circumstances. This is a subtle but important distinction- you must have a clear (if not absolute) definition of a cncept before you begin to research it.

What are the stakes? Money? Bragging rights? Public humiliation for the loser? The secrets of creation? (I have a sneaking suspicion that this will not be considered, considered a substantive annotation, so I will make an extra).

Very important. You can create a false impression easily simply by omitting information, as opposed to outright lying. The "sin of omission" is a huge and often unrecognized problem in researching information. If you know there is another side, please gather information about it. Ideally, study until you can understand why your opponents feel the way they do.