Artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be everywhere these days. In every class I have taken, every job I have worked, or literally any other aspect of my life, AI never fails to pop up. And no matter how you feel about it, it will continue to be around, which is all the more reason to learn how to engage with it the right way.
Reeves Library is creating the space where Moravian students and faculty can do just that. Their new event series, ‘Let’s Chat: AI Salon,’ gives them a forum to express their concerns, enthusiasm, and even tips regarding AI usage.
Kris Beutler, a user experience and assessment librarian at Reeves, admits she was skeptical at first. “But I quickly realized that different industries were going to adopt [AI]. Now, we’re encouraged to use it in the workforce.”
She thought it was important to offer students the opportunity to express their concerns and curiosity, or simply come and listen.
The event series, which will occur once a month this Spring semester, is open-concept: “[N]o formal agenda, no presentations, and no pressure,” said library staff in a recent Instagram post promoting the series.
The first session in the Lower Level of Reeves Library on Thursday, Feb. 12, reflected how most people feel about AI, with a slew of mixed reactions from those in attendance. Some said they embrace it, others said they downright hate it, and some didn’t know how to feel.
One student said he uses it as a tool to brainstorm and research assistance for his classes. As an education major, he sometimes uses it to help him create lesson plans.
Another student, a health sciences major, was concerned about her future in the healthcare field. AI is already helping medical professionals take notes and diagnose patients. What AI will be able to accomplish in the next few years is yet to be seen, but it could have such an impact that it would put various professionals out of work.
Then the question was asked: How do we navigate concerns about personal privacy when engaging with AI tools?
The librarians discussed how any information you put into an AI chatbot is not automatically private. User data in ChatGPT is utilized to train AI models, intended to improve bot responses. On some AI platforms, you can opt out. But most in attendance at the session weren’t even aware that this option existed.
Rayah Levy, Reeves’ public services librarian, emphasized the importance of knowing how to activate these ‘guardrails’ and being cautious of how much and what kind of information to share. You should not share, for instance, any usernames, passwords, or information about where you go to school with ChatGPT.
And much like social media algorithms, the more you engage with a chatbot, the more it gathers information about what you prefer in its responses. It can become a self-contained confirmation bias. Users must remember to think critically about what bots generate.
This is where spaces like Reeves’ ‘AI Salon’ enter the conversation, to fill these gaps in knowledge and encourage critical conversation.
With Moravian actively pushing so much on the AI front, some students worried that the university isn’t doing enough to educate us on using tools safely and ethically. This semester, Moravian officially unveiled the BoodleBox program, which was piloted in President Bryon Grigsby’s class in the fall. It is meant to provide a secure, professor-supervised platform where students can engage with AI safely and ethically in their classes.
The university also plopped a generative artificial intelligence training course into student Canvas pages at the beginning of this semester. But it’s hard to know how many college students will complete an unrequired Canvas shell willingly and on their own time.
The conversation then moved into the realm of academia and scholarly work, where concerns of academic integrity and reliability inevitably surfaced. Students and library staff agreed that AI tools have created a new form of plagiarism and copyright infringement. ChatGPT pulls information from sources publicly available on the internet. So, if you’re asking it to generate any size block of text, you’re most likely plagiarizing someone’s intellectual property without even knowing it.
The librarians offered some tips: use AI to brainstorm, edit, and refine. Never copy and paste.
Another major problem AI users face is chatbots’ tendency to ‘hallucinate’. That is, chatbots generate answers that don’t exist or make no sense.
One student shared an experience using ChatGPT to try to find scholarly sources for a research paper. The bot produced articles that looked legit, but, when double-checked, were fake. When the user confronted the machine about lying, ChatGPT generated more false results.
This anecdote prompted more advice from the librarians: always, always, always double-check any information chatbots give you. Credibility must not be the cost of convenience.
Of course, the librarians reminded students, they are a free resource for research assistance and help in finding scholarly sources. Students need not automatically turn to ChatGPT.
Overall, the discussion was extremely helpful in aiding students learn how to navigate an AI-dominated landscape. In about an hour, the salon covered various topics, allowing students and staff alike to share their thoughts on a plethora of issues.
The conversation will continue with Reeves Library’s ‘Let’s Chat: AI Salon’ series on Mar. 5 and Apr. 9 at noon.
