News

By Jared Branahl
Middle & Upper School Information and Media Literacy Librarian

In legendary science fiction writer Isaac Asimov’s 1941 short story Liar!, an assembly error produces a robot with the ability to both read minds and—spoiler alert—to lie to humans. This second revelation confounds the robot’s creators, as the First Law of Robotics in Asimov’s fictional universe declares that a robot may not injure a human or allow a human to come to harm. Eventually, the scientists conclude that it is precisely because of this law that the robot is compelled to lie. 

“This robot reads minds. Do you suppose that if asked a question, it wouldn’t give exactly that answer one wants to hear? Wouldn’t any other answer hurt us?” 

In 2023, it often feels like we are surrounded by technologies much like Asimov’s wayward, mind-reading robot. Social media platforms track and infer users’ interests through myriad data points in order to promote featured content and sell targeted advertising. Personal feeds are customized for the user, based not upon what is most objective or accurate, but based upon which content is most likely to solicit engagement. 

Google, the most used search engine around the world, filters search results based on the geopolitical location of the user, hides its search algorithms from inspection, and has spent years blurring the lines between sponsored advertisements and organic search results. Twitter is attempting to manage disinformation and spam bots, but can’t tell the difference between state propaganda and an independent news source.   

On the AI front, emerging tools like ChatGPT offer quick and easy answers to any imaginable question or prompt. The chat bot’s confident replies and ability to converse back and forth gives a very authoritative air. Except, sometimes those answers turn out to be “artificial hallucinations” with no basis in the training data, and no way for a human user to tell the difference. 
 
It’s an unstable information landscape, to say the least. 

Libraries, thought by some to be going the way of the dinosaurs in this digital age, are now more important than ever. Unlike all of the technologies mentioned above, libraries are not bound by the imperative to turn information into profit. With no obligations to advertisers, sponsored content or engagement metrics, libraries are freed to simply provide the best resources to meet their users’ unique information needs.  

Library collections are living organisms: growing as topics or interests emerge and develop, retracting and tightening as particular materials become outdated or irrelevant. The Hall Library at NSCD has a curated print collection of over 10,000 professionally reviewed books, available for use by students and staff. Digitally, Hall Library provides access to ebooks, audiobooks, and academic research databases such as Gale, ProQuest and JSTOR. Yet, of all these valuable resources, there is one resource that truly makes Hall Library stand apart from the information automatons available online: people. 

The library’s physical space promotes organic interactions and collaborations that can’t be replicated in any text chat or Zoom meeting. And like any appropriately staffed library, there are masters-educated professionals standing by, ready to partner with information seekers on their journey of discovery. 

There’s a whole world of information to explore. Make sure to pick the right guide.