Last week 38 people from units across Stanford Libraries completed the six-week Elements of AI course. Of those who responded to the course survey, all said they would recommend it to colleagues. They also unanimously agreed that meeting weekly in groups to discuss each chapter was the most rewarding part of taking the course.
Several librarians across the United States have been petitioning ISO and ANSI to release or open up access to several critical standards in the response efforts to the COVID-19 pandemic. ANSI has announced a portal that contains several of these important standards, including standards for the fabrication of ventilators and standards for incident management response, released to the public. At this time, 31 of these ISO standards have been released, and you can access them by visiting the following links.
The image associated with this post is from "Autonomous Trap" by James Bridle.
If you attended or watched the talks at Fantastic Futures December 2019, you know that the answer to that question is emphatically, No. Both of the keynote speakers spoke to the essential role of libraries, whether in providing curated data to improve AI, or in preserving the data, models, and records for oversight of how the technology is implemented. We saw a number of examples of practitioners operating within libraries, archives, and museums who are applying the techniques of AI to their own work. We also learned about Elements of AI, a free online course that can be taken while sheltering in place during the dangerous spread of Covid-19.
At the VALA2020 conference on Libraries and Technology last month I stated, as I have in numerous other presentations, reports, and recommendations, that implementations of technology (and I am usually speaking about AI) in libraries should reflect the ethos of the library. I say this not because the ethos of the library is correct, just, or even well-defined; but it is something to which we who work in libraries can be held accountable.