Artificial Intelligence

Information literacy (IL) is described by the American Library Association (ALA) as the ability to "recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information" (ALA Presidential Committee on Information Literacy, 1989, para. 3). Information literacy is critical in both academia as well as everyday life, and it is therefore critical that SUNY Oneonta students learn to be information literate and critical thinkers while at SUNY Oneonta. 

To guide this undertaking in communities of higher education, librarians use the six frames of the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education to guide conversations surrounding information and critical thinking. These six frames include: 

1. Authority is Constructed and Contextual:
   • This frame explores the authority of a source, identifying types of authority and when each type of authority is important. Traditional academic authority can be discussed through the process of peer-review, and traditional author credentials. However, conversations surrounding authority can outline what types of biases these traditional sources of authority can reiterate.
2. Information Creation as a Process:
   • This frame explores the process of information creation and dissemination, and how information can have value in various formats for various information needs. The information seeker must determine their specific information needs to determine what type or source of information will satisfy this need.
3. Information has Value:
   • This frame explores the value that information holds in society. Discussions of this frame could include understanding the voices that are heard through information sharing and those who are not, who owns various types of information through intellectual property, citation, copyright, and the commodity of information in data and privacy.
4. Research as Inquiry:
   • This frame explores research as an interdisciplinary process, not done within a vacuum, but instead disrupting barriers between traditional disciplines and processes, through continuous critical thinking and questioning of information. This frame begins to explore how following lines of thought and refining research questions can strengthen research and in turn, an individual's information literacy skills.
5. Scholarship as Conversation:
   • This frame outlines how scholarship is contributed to through experts and novices alike, contributing to research increases the greater understanding of a thought or theory, and each contributor adds to the conversation through citations and contributions of their own thought processes on a given topic. 
6. Searching as Strategic Exploration:
   • This frame describes the search process as not a simple point A to point B process; it is iterative. Searching for information requires complex queries down diverse pathways, asking dynamic and critical questions, pivoting and following claims to lead to a greater understanding of a research question and the information currently available on the topic. 

For more reading on information literacy, and to read more about each of the six frames, please see the ALA's Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, published in 2016. 

The emergence of AI has provided an opportunity for growth in information literacy instruction, understanding, and interest. Alignment of this professional framework with AI can be explored below, please contact a Milne Librarian to discuss this alignment further.

1. Authority is Constructed and Contextual:
   • Authority of an information source is traceable in traditional modes of publication, but when talking about AI chatbots, the source of information and who wrote it, is not entirely understood. AI chatbots are proprietary and therefore, where the information is coming from, how it is trained, and why that specific information is being used to answer your question is not public knowledge. This frame could be discussed through comparing Wikipedia, a peer-reviewed journal, and a chatbot. Who are the authors of all three sources, and what authority does each source hold? Which source would you trust to give you credible information, and which sources might you not rely on for high stakes purposes, where you are seeking accurate information?
2. Information Creation as a Process:
   • Information seekers must determine what type of information they are seeking to determine what type of information will fill their needs. An example of how AI could be used to teach this frame, is by explaining what peer-review is, and the extensive process of this review, and then asking for a really simple answer, something like why are strawberries red? This is a type of answer that might not warrant a peer-review article to satisfy a curiosity, this might be a case where a Google search, or a quick "chat" with AI might fill the information need. However, to understand the scientific reasoning behind why strawberries are red in a course, an information seeker might look for a peer-reviewed article which explains the strawberry fruit's biology, as was explored by Martínez-Rivas et al in 2023. 
3. Information has value:
   • This frame can be aligned with AI on a multitude of levels. First, depending on which AI chatbot you are using, when a query is entered, the chatbot will provide you with an answer, but might not provide you with the source in which it retrieved that answer. Therefore, the person who created the information sources in which the AI chatbot is relying on, is not given proper recognition for their own work, calling issues to intellectual property, citation practices, and copyright. Additionally, this frame would be valuable in understanding how students' own data is being used by AI chatbots as training data. ChatGPT recently detailed the process of opting out of this function of the AI chatbot, by asking the chatbot to not train your data. 
4. Research as Inquiry: 
   • The frame Research as Inquiry can be explored through using AI throughout the research process. While a user could ask an AI chatbot to help them narrow in on a research topic for a specific course, it is unlikely that the student will receive the answer they are looking for on the first try. Therefore, this process will teach them to continuously ask more complex or specific questions to get the answers that they want, ultimately broadening the understanding of their research topic and improving their prompt literacy.
5. Scholarship as Conversation:
   • Scholarship as conversation could be explored through evaluating the lack of citation practices within AI chatbots. When you are asking AI chatbots for an answer to a question, most AI chatbots will provide you the answer, but not outline where the answer was sourced from. This can interrupt the process of Scholarship as Conversation, in that students will not be able to contribute to the scholarly conversation if they do not know where the information is coming from. The lack of authority could be discussed by backing your argument by saying, "ChatGPT said," or "I saw on TikTok," instead of backing your argument by saying "I read an article," or "my professor taught us." This could lead to great conversations surrounding value of information, and the value each individual holds to contribute to the scholarly conversation. 
6. Searching as Strategic Exploration:
   • The process of searching could be aided by use of an AI chatbot. For example, AI chatbots tend to be really valuable in "chatting" back and forth to narrow down on a topic, or to brainstorm keywords for a research project. Chatting with a chatbot about your research topic could be compared to chatting with a classmate about your topic, or doing a quick Google search for "research topics about crop yield in North America." Using AI in this way could challenge students to follow rabbit holes and continue to ask questions about what kind of information they need for their assignment, what research they are interested in, and what platforms they should be using to identify research on their topic. Using AI in this initial stage of research could be a way to brainstorm with AI in a low stakes manner, but could also raise questions about intellectual property and when an idea is no longer your own, which could create great conversations surrounding AI use in the classroom,

Further reading for alignment of the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education and AI is explored in an article by James and Filgo (2023).

Conversations surrounding AI, specifically chatbots, have been discussed at length across academia since ChatGPT was released in late 2022 (Marr, 2023). These conversations include librarians, as information professionals, as the landscape of information is continuously evolving, creating opportunities for development in IL instruction. 

To meet the emerging need of understanding AI through the lens of IL, Milne Librarians have begun to research and develop lesson plans for library instruction surrounding AI and chatbots. These lesson plans are diverse, but all reveal very interesting, complex, and eyeopening conversations surrounding AI. ​​​​​Please contact your Milne Librarians to schedule a traditional or AI specific library session!