Associate Professor of Information Science, University of Colorado Boulder
The Librarian’s Dividend: Pathways towards Information Ethics and Literacy in the Age of Generative AI
Many of the ways that generative AI is reshaping the information environment have created threats to trust, truth, and equity. Due to both the incidental misinformation of AI “hallucinations” and intentionally created deepfakes, we face the growing effects of what scholars call the liar’s dividend—a world where the constant possibility of fabrication undermines confidence in what is real, and the benefit that bad actors receive from that uncertainty. Within this context, I propose that a way to counter this threat is to cultivate a librarian’s dividend: the social and ethical benefits that come from trusted curation and equitable access from the people and institutions who can help us evaluate information.
This talk will provide a foundation for understanding how generative AI produces information, including how “hallucinations,” training data, and bias shape the outputs that we see. The ways that ethical and societal issues underlying AI intersect with core areas of information literacy such as credibility, equity, and interpretation highlight opportunities for fostering AI literacy and guiding communities towards responsible decisions around AI. In this sense, the librarian’s dividend is not just a metaphor but a call to action—an investment in human expertise as an essential counterbalance to the disruptions in our information ecosystem.
Casey Fiesler is an Associate Professor of Information Science (and Computer Science by courtesy) and the William R. Payden Endowed Professor at University of Colorado Boulder. She researches and teaches in the areas of technology ethics, internet law and policy, and online communities. Her work on research ethics for data science, ethics education in computing, and broadening participation in computing has been supported by the National Science Foundation, and she is the recipient of an NSF CAREER Award. Also, a public scholar, she is a frequent commentator and speaker on topics like AI ethics and social media policy, and her research has been covered everywhere from The New York Times to Teen Vogue. She has also written for outlets like WIRED and Slate, though she’s particularly proud of her TikToks. She holds a PhD in Human-Centered Computing and a JD from Vanderbilt Law School.
Learn more about Casey on her website: Casey Fiesler