Technology

“As libraries engage more deeply with AI, concern has moved from predominately budget constraints toward ethics and reputational risk: privacy and security (64 percent), misinformation (60 percent), and bias or discrimination in AI outputs (50 percent) have all risen since 2024. Concerns peak among libraries at the initial implementation phase, suggesting concerns intensify with engagement rather than deter it,” according to Clarivate’s 2026 Pulse of the Library Report, published earlier this month.

In this month's AI Watch column, the Libraries Lead podcast team discusses Claude’s new invisible watermarking system for AI-generated text, how the public may be shifting from standard internet searches to AI, and Mike Eisenberg’s new iPrompt script for Claude and Gemini designed to reduce hallucinations by forcing the AI to check its own work and cite sources.

Given the trends over the past decades and looking toward the future, how could or should the overarching, primary rationale for libraries be refashioned?

As AI transforms information and knowledge creation, the future of librarianship rests with claiming our role as accountable partners in learning.

The three of us talk monthly in the Libraries Lead podcast (available at librarieslead.libraryjournal.com). This month, Dave discusses sycophantic AI and its social consequences; Mike talks about personal experiments with Claude: wins, saves, and one honest failure; and Beth takes on AI policy tensions: states push back as federal authority expands.

As Learning Labs Supervisor for Gwinnett County Public Library (GCPL), GA, Fernando Aragon helped shape an idea submitted by Eli Frederick during a job interview, working with him to cocreate GCPL’s Game Jam and GameDev video game showcase. Last year, the fourth annual showcase included developers from Aragon’s computer programming courses at Georgia State and Gwinnett Technical College, and drew more than 1,300 attendees.

Jessica Chapel recognizes that high-quality collections put libraries in a position to make demands and establish guardrails when dealing with big tech corporations. As Chief of Digital and Online Services for Boston Public Library (BPL), Chapel works on a pilot project funded by OpenAI/ChatGPT that explores how BPL can scale its digitization and archival cataloging efforts using AI.

In this month's AI Watch column, the Libraries Lead podcast team discusses whether AI could be making us work more, not less; ChatGPT's testing of ads; and how AI is being used in crime investigations.

Among the more than 100 pages of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, two paragraphs have had outsized influence on library services over the last 30 years. These paragraphs are the basis of the federal E-Rate program which, today, supports internet connectivity for about half of the nation’s public libraries.