Nobody likes you when you're 23 (things)

I recently read an article The Generative AI Conversation Hub of the University: Positioning Reflection and Skill-Building in the Daily Work of Library Practitioners in the Journal of Library Administration.

It explores the approach that a library team at the University of Western Sydney has taken in bringing their staff on board their AI learning journey, and then positing the library as being the subject specialists for the university community in facilitating  ongoing conversations around AI.

There's a lot to unpack in that article. It filled me me with a combination of hope, dread and elements of "I'm glad somebody's taking this work on but also I'm glad it's not me."

The mention of the "23 things / learning 2.0" triggered a very specific memory for me. Back in the late 2000s, when I was working in public libraries, there was a big push to deliver this training to all library staff through online training modules focused on 23 different social media tools. Personally, I was all for it. I felt very passionately that, as information professionals, we needed to be on top of social media trends as an integral part of our professional work - and as a way to stay relevant to a constantly changing information society.

There was, of course, pushback at the time. Plenty of librarians saying, "it's just a fad" or "this has absolutely nothing to do with my professional work" or "I've got actual work to do, please stop trying to waste my time with this nonsense." I was pretty disparaging of these attitudes. I had so much hope for the future of social media - a people-led information utopia where gatekeeping was shunned and we lived in a community-led participatory online society.

Yet, 20'ish years later, here we are. Social media is not what we hoped it to be. Maybe the naysayers were right.

And now, the next big disruptive technology event has arrived in the form of AI. I daresay that we're all a bit more pessimistic about the opportunities that it will provide - especially with all the ethical problems that generative AI have already caused. I wouldn't judge anybody for wanting to push back and ask if this is the kind of technology that we want to rule our future way of life. 

I am all for maintaining professional knowledge through curiosity, experimentation and play - a big theme for the 23 things approach. However, we also need to consider - is this technology doing any harm? What consequences will there be for adopting this as a mainstream technological tool. Before we get too preoccupied on whether we could, can we stop and think about whether we should? (To paraphrase Dr Ian Malcolm).