Categories
generative ai

In Which Computers Solve the Book Banning Crisis

For important research purposes, I asked ChatGPT and Bard the following question:

What are the benefits of intellectual freedom and access to information?

Here’s what they had to say.

Bard answered, copyable in Markdown no less:

Intellectual freedom and access to information are essential for a free and democratic society. They allow people to think for themselves, to form their own opinions, and to participate in the political process. Intellectual freedom also promotes the free flow of ideas, which is essential for innovation and progress.

Here are some of the benefits of intellectual freedom and access to information:

  • People can think for themselves. Intellectual freedom allows people to access information from a variety of sources and to form their own opinions. This is essential for a democracy, as it allows citizens to make informed decisions about their government and their country.
  • People can participate in the political process. Intellectual freedom allows people to share their ideas with others and to debate important issues. This is essential for a democracy, as it allows citizens to have a voice in government.
  • The free flow of ideas promotes innovation and progress. Intellectual freedom allows people to share their ideas with others and to build on the work of others. This is essential for innovation and progress, as it allows new ideas to emerge and new technologies to be developed.
  • Intellectual freedom promotes understanding and tolerance. Intellectual freedom allows people to learn about different cultures and to understand different points of view. This is essential for understanding and tolerance, as it allows people to see the world from different perspectives.

ChatGPT was a bit more longwinded:

Intellectual freedom and access to information are essential components of a healthy, democratic society. Here are some of the benefits of intellectual freedom and access to information:

  1. Promotes creativity and innovation: Intellectual freedom encourages people to think outside the box, take risks and come up with new ideas. Access to information provides the resources and knowledge necessary to innovate.
  2. Facilitates personal growth and development: Intellectual freedom allows individuals to explore their own interests, beliefs, and values, and to challenge their own assumptions. Access to information provides opportunities for self-education and personal growth.
  3. Fosters informed decision making: Access to information enables individuals to make informed decisions about their lives, such as their health, finances, and education.
  4. Supports social justice: Intellectual freedom and access to information are essential for promoting social justice by providing marginalized communities with the tools and resources necessary to advocate for their rights.
  5. Strengthens democracy: Informed citizens are essential for a healthy democracy. Intellectual freedom and access to information enable citizens to participate in the democratic process by staying informed about important issues and making informed decisions.
  6. Encourages critical thinking: Intellectual freedom and access to information encourage critical thinking, which is essential for evaluating information and making informed decisions.

Overall, intellectual freedom and access to information are essential for individual growth and development, social justice, and a healthy democracy.

Do I hear a little “doth protest too much” in the emphasis on healthy democracy? I wondered about that word healthy, and looked to see from where it might be drawn. The ALA FAQ on Censorship and Intellectual freedom includes the word but in the context of “there is such a thing as a healthy interest in sex!”, which maybe lose that exclamation point.

Such models are predictive, however, not taking text literally from the internet, so I began to wonder when people were talking about the concept and in what context. Google N-grams show the peak of the phrase was in 2000. I will leave other research projects than my current messing around to uncover the changes of the use of the phrase, but I am super curious about how such ideas make it into large language models. Now let’s take it from the other side.

What would some disadvantages to intellectual freedom be?

Bard in its shorter style (for me so far at least)

There are some potential disadvantages to intellectual freedom, including:

  • The spread of misinformation. Intellectual freedom allows people to access information from a variety of sources, including some that may not be reliable. This can lead to the spread of misinformation, which can have harmful consequences.
  • The spread of hate speech. Intellectual freedom also allows people to express their opinions, including those that are hateful. This can lead to the spread of hate speech, which can have harmful consequences.
  • The exploitation of intellectual property. Intellectual freedom allows people to share their ideas with others, which can lead to the exploitation of intellectual property. This can harm creators and innovators.
  • The suppression of dissent. Intellectual freedom allows people to express their opinions, even those that are unpopular. This can lead to the suppression of dissent, which can harm democracy.

It is important to note that these are just potential disadvantages, and that the benefits of intellectual freedom often outweigh the risks.

And ChatGPT:

While intellectual freedom has many benefits, there can also be some disadvantages to unfettered intellectual freedom. Here are some potential drawbacks:

  1. Spread of misinformation: In the absence of accurate information, individuals may come to believe and propagate false or misleading information, leading to societal harm.
  2. Promotion of harmful or extremist ideas: Intellectual freedom can also enable individuals to promote harmful or extremist ideas, which can threaten public safety and harm marginalized communities.
  3. Exposure to harmful content: Individuals may also be exposed to content that is harmful or offensive, such as hate speech or graphic violence.
  4. Confusion and indecisiveness: When individuals are presented with too much information, it can lead to confusion and indecisiveness, making it difficult to make informed decisions.
  5. Loss of privacy: Intellectual freedom can also lead to the exposure of personal information, which can be used for nefarious purposes.
  6. Censorship by those in power: Finally, in some cases, those in power may use intellectual freedom as an excuse to censor ideas that they disagree with or find threatening, which can have a chilling effect on free speech.

Overall, while intellectual freedom is essential for individual growth and societal progress, it can also have some disadvantages, particularly when it comes to the spread of misinformation, harmful content, and extremist ideas.

Now I guess the only rational followup question is, how are you, the large language model and its developers, going to integrate this reality into your programming? It’s an idea. I’m messing around with a lot of these ideas here in public over the next few weeks, so please share your thoughts!

Categories
Music

Some thoughts about music from 2021

Ignoring that I haven’t written a blog post in a year despite my best intentions, I return here to share a few thoughts about the music I liked in 2021. The first thing to say, of course, is that 2021 was a really hard and terrible year for just about everyone. My own year is hard to describe. It started terribly, got better, got terrible again, got much better, and had ups and downs. A few people know pieces of the story. For the purposes of this moment, however, it’s useful to know that there were reasons that my music listening was the way it was, and I found it an essential  way to process all the emotions of the year. Does that make this year different from any other? I have to let myself assume that this year was one of especial personal growth.

This playlist contains my whole list of favorites for the year. As with last year, I put certain releases on here immediately upon listening, and others later in the year as I kept returning to them. Notably TORRES’s Thirstier I didn’t get when it first came out, but later made much more sense. One that is premonitory is Beach House’s Once Twice Melody, which technically doesn’t come out until 2022, but this is the two EPs that have come out so far. A few things I listened to a lot are missing, but I struggled with loving the entire album and have the songs I liked on other playlists that chart my year. I put a few of my favorite singles at the end, of which Chaise Longue is clearly the most important, unless it’s Rumors.

Concerts came back, eventually. My first post-pandemic show was Mannequin Pussy on the first night of their dramatic US tour. I also saw Lala Lala and Adrianne Lenker. Will concerts actually return in 2022? I hope.

Some favorites, all in the female singer/songwriter vein because this is kind of my thing. Of course a very limited selection from the whole list.

Echo, Indigo Sparke

An early favorite of the year, this took on new meaning later in the year, and I don’t think I will ever think of this summer without “Colourblind” floating through my head.

Planet (i), Squirrel Flower

A sort of dystopian concept album, but described exactly how I felt in the current dystopia.

I Want the Door to Open, Lala Lala

I saw the record release show, and loved every moment, and DIVER was an essential song for the year.

Things Take Time, Take Time; Courtney Barnett

Captures the pandemic feeling, but in a very hopeful way.

I don’t want to live a year quite like 2021 again. Once in lifetime was enough, but we don’t exactly get to choose. The joy that I found late in 2021 year is following me into 2022, and what more can I ask for?

Categories
Privacy

Privacy in the Pandemic: Approaching Privacy in Academia in Early 2021

Sitting here in early 2021, with the pandemic still raging, despite endless rounds of magical thinking, it is hard to see how we in academic libraries have done so far. We lack perspective and are still in the crisis management point of this experience. At the beginning of the pandemic, I thought it would be interesting to see how well anyone was able to follow their stated values in a crisis, but I was too overwhelmed by everything going on in my personal life in addition to work life to do any research on this topic. It was not an unproductive period, however. I was able to work on new services, however slowly the work went, and despite presentations being canceled was able to “replace” all those presentations with others, leaving my CV intact for 2020. The values I was mostly concerned about were privacy, and throughout these presentations and new services was able to integrate reminders about the importance of privacy. I am always the privacy bird in meetings, after some idea is floated, I pop up and say, “But what about privacy?”  For example, in setting up a new contactless pickup service we discussed this for managing the hold pickup shelf and trying to keep as much of the communication as possible in systems with retention policies. But were we to carefully analyze all the privacy gaps in that service, I know it wouldn’t meet the highest standards that we set for ourselves (though even those are hard to meet).

Even if we do not have perspective, I want to spend some time attempting to wrap my mind around all the changes in expectation that, if not permanent, seem likely to be in operation for the next several years. I personally don’t believe that “everything will change forever”, but people have had to make a massive investment in new infrastructure and ways of working, and those are unlikely to be discarded instantly. That will affect values, which are always shifting anyway. The pandemic itself simply tore away norms or illusions of norms—but what is comfortable and easy will return in time.

That said, meeting the crisis in this moment has required flexibility that would have seemed incredible just a short time before. Perhaps not everyone looked up periodically during their workdays in April and said, “How is this our lives?” but I certainly did. As more realities crashed down upon us, what is effective and pragmatic tended to outweigh the more ethical ideal. The first shift came with remote learning, the second with massive protests and uprisings, and concomitant requests for academia to confront its institutional racism. Both these put the people with the least political capital (even though they might be the actual paying customers) in positions of defense against institutions which assumed that the students were going to do things like cheat or organize against administration. And maybe the students were going to do those things, but maybe those things needed to be done.

Academic integrity in remote learning was one of those topics I followed with interest based on my membership in an academic technology committee at my university, but the software the university had was treated as a niche and experimental product with only a few departments where it was relevant, and a price tag that kept it there. That of course all changed when classes that had exams in person and teachers who only had ever thought about giving exams in person needed to shift to being remote. Some people came up with byzantine strategies involving printing and scanning to ensure a time limit for students to have access to the test materials. Personally, the one time we really needed a printer for an important legal document that needed to be handed in on paper (though why remains a mystery to me) we had to visit the UPS store down the street, so that would have been tricky on a three-hour time limit.

Many turned to software instead. The proctoring solutions for remote exams often rely on showing the personal environment of the students in detail, which requires a level of autonomy and preparation that few people have. Right now, I have a giant pile of odds and ends on my desk that are out of view of my camera, so irrelevant to my work colleagues. But if I had to show all the material on my desk it would tell a story I might not want to tell—the at minimum three Dunkin Donuts coffee lid plugs being a major one of my pandemic gluttony and failure to throw things away. Other items are merely looking for a new home after a massive decluttering and reorganization project to make my home office livable, and I will get to them in time, but they are not urgent enough to warrant attention yet with everything else going on. Everyone is in the same situation. Few people have a prepared work area at home that they would want to show the world. (Side note: since writing this paragraph and publishing, I have cleaned up my desk because I have the kind of brain that needs an empty work surface to feel creative, which I know is opposite from many people).

The response of faculty or others in positions to assess and select tools has varied widely. In my personal experience, some people were casting about for whatever would recreate whatever method they already understood. Of course, it wasn’t possible to do that, but disciplines or courses built around a high stakes final exam were hard to retool in the middle of the semester. I heard some attitudes with which I didn’t agree. The most charitable interpretation of these is that students were under intense pressure themselves and removing temptation would be beneficial. I’m sure you can fill in the least charitable interpretation yourself.

On the other hand, many people are very concerned about surveillance of students, and the concurrent surveillance of everyone else. Asking public questions was a dangerous thing for Ian Linkletter who works at the University of British Columbia for being publicly outspoken about the dangers of Proctorio, though the  CEO of Proctorio claims the software was his own reaction to other more privacy-violating software. Perhaps there is no software that can truly be ethical in this space. I suspect not.

As we begin a semester that at least for now promises to possibly end with more in-person possibilities for exams but will necessarily involve mass surveillance of constant health testing to be on campus, where privacy fits in all this remains complicated. We cannot exist in public spaces currently without being tracked, and we cannot exist in private spaces without being tracked. Then again, last week saw one very public internet presence shut down for causing a seditious riot that was planned in public. Yet again, who is surveilled and for what cause indicates values.