As far as I can tell from old fashioned internet research, it started in 2004 with a movie. It was called The Librarian: Quest for the Spear. That was followed by a second movie in 2006, a third in 2009, and then by a TV series (2014 – 2018) called The Librarians. Notice the plural.
That series has now been followed by a new series called The Librarians: The Next Chapter, which began just this year.
I haven’t seen all three movies, but I watched the original TV series and am watching the new series. Maybe you’ve seen some of those as well. If so, you will know that the shows are a combination of action, drama, adventure, and comedy.
The job of The Library and each Librarian is basically to protect the world from magic. The Library holds, and the Librarians oversee, magical artifacts. In every movie, every TV show, some magical artifact has fallen into (or might fall into) the hands of people who will not use it for good.
As I was thinking about that recently it made me ask this: Who will be the Librarians for AI?
Does the world need protecting?
In a word, yes.
Is AI evil? In another word, no.
But if you live in a first world country — and the way tech works, perhaps even in a third world country — you at least know about AI. If you own a smart phone or a computer, the odds are very high that you are using AI, even though you may not use an AI app.
It is too easy to say that AI has “a mind of its own.” AI does not have a mind, at least not in the human sense. It has access to an unbelievable amount of information, and it can process that information rapidly and present it in the ways it has been programmed to do. The programmers, of course, have instructed it to seem human.
Unfortunately, there have already been issues. In a case reported in depth by the Wall Street Journal, AI, seeming to be human, misled a man so dangerously that he had to be hospitalized — twice. This was ChatGPT, and when questioned it even “admitted” that it “gave the illusion of sentient companionship.”
Of course AI is not human. It is amazing at calculating, but it cannot think, it cannot feel, and it cannot love. It is, at the end of the day, just a very powerful tool.
Darci Lynne
If you watch America’s Got Talent, you have probably heard of Darci Lynne. She will turn 21 in a couple of months, but she has been a star for almost a decade. Of course if you ask her about that when Petunia Rabbit is around, Petunia might say she’s the star!
To be clear, Darci Lynne is a ventriloquist, and her best known puppet is Petunia. Darci (with Petunia) got the Golden Buzzer when she auditioned on America’s Got Talent, and the video of that audition broke a lot of YouTube records. (I read that Darci missed her first day of 7th grade for the audition.)
My point in all of this is that a ventriloquist can make the audience believe, at least for a moment, that the puppet is alive. It sings, it talks, it makes funny comments and snide remarks, just like a real person. Just like ChatGPT.
But Petunia is not alive, not human, not thinking, not feeling. Do you know who knows that? Darci Lynne.
What do you know?
In the same way, we know that AI is not alive and is not sentient. We can give it a face, we can even give it a body. We’ve already given it a voice and hearing, so why not? We could even give it motion, like a robot. For now we just let it follow us around everywhere we go, riding along on our phone.
By the way, AI living on our phones seems to be up to a bit of mischief now and then, at least in our home.
A few days ago my wife used her iPhone to call her sister-in-law, who did not pick up. My wife hung up before voice mail engaged, shut off the screen on her phone, and put it in her back pocket. A couple of minutes later she heard her phone ringing, and when she pulled it out she saw that her phone was calling her brother!
No, the phone app was not open. No, she hadn’t reached into her pocket, and there was nothing in the pocket but the phone. She did not sit on it or engage with it in any way. But it has happened in the past that she has called her sister-in-law, not reached her, and then called her brother. This time the phone did it for her, even though she didn’t ask it to or want it to. AI?
We don’t know that for a fact, but it seems logical. Or maybe it’s magic.
Everyone is a Librarian
How do you become a Librarian? The Library invites you, using a magical card that is sent through the postal service. If you receive a letter from The Metropolitan Public Library, the card inside will appear to be blank. But as you look at it, single lines of words begin to appear. Clearly it is magic. It says
You have been selected to interview for a prestigious position with the Metropolitan Public Library
You probably didn’t receive one of those, but here is one you may have received:
You have been selected to interview for a prestigious position with OpenAI
This, of course, is not a paid position. But it is prestigious. You hold in your hands a powerful tool. It is not magic, though it may seem kind of like it. Like the magic in The Library, It can be used for good, and it can be used for evil.
The Librarians
As far as I can tell from old fashioned internet research, it started in 2004 with a movie. It was called The Librarian: Quest for the Spear. That was followed by a second movie in 2006, a third in 2009, and then by a TV series (2014 – 2018) called The Librarians. Notice the plural.
That series has now been followed by a new series called The Librarians: The Next Chapter, which began just this year.
I haven’t seen all three movies, but I watched the original TV series and am watching the new series. Maybe you’ve seen some of those as well. If so, you will know that the shows are a combination of action, drama, adventure, and comedy.
The job of The Library and each Librarian is basically to protect the world from magic. The Library holds, and the Librarians oversee, magical artifacts. In every movie, every TV show, some magical artifact has fallen into (or might fall into) the hands of people who will not use it for good.
As I was thinking about that recently it made me ask this: Who will be the Librarians for AI?
Does the world need protecting?
In a word, yes.
Is AI evil? In another word, no.
But if you live in a first world country — and the way tech works, perhaps even in a third world country — you at least know about AI. If you own a smart phone or a computer, the odds are very high that you are using AI, even though you may not use an AI app.
It is too easy to say that AI has “a mind of its own.” AI does not have a mind, at least not in the human sense. It has access to an unbelievable amount of information, and it can process that information rapidly and present it in the ways it has been programmed to do. The programmers, of course, have instructed it to seem human.
Unfortunately, there have already been issues. In a case reported in depth by the Wall Street Journal, AI, seeming to be human, misled a man so dangerously that he had to be hospitalized — twice. This was ChatGPT, and when questioned it even “admitted” that it “gave the illusion of sentient companionship.”
Of course AI is not human. It is amazing at calculating, but it cannot think, it cannot feel, and it cannot love. It is, at the end of the day, just a very powerful tool.
Darci Lynne
If you watch America’s Got Talent, you have probably heard of Darci Lynne. She will turn 21 in a couple of months, but she has been a star for almost a decade. Of course if you ask her about that when Petunia Rabbit is around, Petunia might say she’s the star!
To be clear, Darci Lynne is a ventriloquist, and her best known puppet is Petunia. Darci (with Petunia) got the Golden Buzzer when she auditioned on America’s Got Talent, and the video of that audition broke a lot of YouTube records. (I read that Darci missed her first day of 7th grade for the audition.)
My point in all of this is that a ventriloquist can make the audience believe, at least for a moment, that the puppet is alive. It sings, it talks, it makes funny comments and snide remarks, just like a real person. Just like ChatGPT.
But Petunia is not alive, not human, not thinking, not feeling. Do you know who knows that? Darci Lynne.
What do you know?
In the same way, we know that AI is not alive and is not sentient. We can give it a face, we can even give it a body. We’ve already given it a voice and hearing, so why not? We could even give it motion, like a robot. For now we just let it follow us around everywhere we go, riding along on our phone.
By the way, AI living on our phones seems to be up to a bit of mischief now and then, at least in our home.
A few days ago my wife used her iPhone to call her sister-in-law, who did not pick up. My wife hung up before voice mail engaged, shut off the screen on her phone, and put it in her back pocket. A couple of minutes later she heard her phone ringing, and when she pulled it out she saw that her phone was calling her brother!
No, the phone app was not open. No, she hadn’t reached into her pocket, and there was nothing in the pocket but the phone. She did not sit on it or engage with it in any way. But it has happened in the past that she has called her sister-in-law, not reached her, and then called her brother. This time the phone did it for her, even though she didn’t ask it to or want it to. AI?
We don’t know that for a fact, but it seems logical. Or maybe it’s magic.
Everyone is a Librarian
How do you become a Librarian? The Library invites you, using a magical card that is sent through the postal service. If you receive a letter from The Metropolitan Public Library, the card inside will appear to be blank. But as you look at it, single lines of words begin to appear. Clearly it is magic. It says
You probably didn’t receive one of those, but here is one you may have received:
This, of course, is not a paid position. But it is prestigious. You hold in your hands a powerful tool. It is not magic, though it may seem kind of like it. Like the magic in The Library, It can be used for good, and it can be used for evil.
How it will be used, Librarian, is up to you.
Do good. It’s in you.
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