Jennifer Jordan

I recently co-authored an article about using artificial intelligence (AI) to create open educational resources (OER). But that doesn’t mean I’m totally comfortable using AI. For example, I have had some weird experiences with ChatGPT, like when it told me I had great style. Hallucinate much? Then yesterday, Google’s AI told me my keyword search was biased. And it was. I know it was. I asked why Americans were stupid because the news feels bleak, and I wanted to see what articles might come up with that keyword search. I wasn’t expecting to be chastised by my search engine.

I naively believed Google Chrome was intended to retrieve information (and make money, of course), not critique my search methods. So I made another Google query: “Why is Google critiquing my search?” Google AI replied that it wasn’t critiquing my search in a judgmental way and it was trying to improve the results I see by highlighting potential issues with the query.

I wasn’t about to let an LLM make me question my reality, so I asked Google AI why it was gaslighting me, and it responded that it wasn’t gaslighting me, something a gaslighter would say.

That’s when I downloaded Duckduckgo on my phone. I don’t want the unsolicited advice of Google AI or any LLM. There are times when I want to work with AI, and there are times when I want to use my own brain.

I do think there are times when artificial intelligence can be beneficial, like when I have to complete a task that feels like busywork, or if I want to speed up a work-related task that would normally take a long time.

At the university where I work, with my colleagues, I also explored how AI could be applied by faculty who want to create resources for their students, so they can go textbook free or fill a gap in curriculum that traditional publishers can’t fill. The end result was this article coming out tomorrow in The Journal of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education. While working on this project, I learned a lot about AI research and I became acquainted with a new technological lexicon. I definitely stretched myself while working on this.

This article is basically a case study about a program where another librarian and I worked to create a cohort of faculty who learned about using artificial intelligence to create open educational resources. I am proud of what we did together. Some of the faculty in this program helped to co-author our article. Check it out if you have a chance.

Back to searching the internet, if you want more control of your searches, I highly recommend both the Brave browser, which works pretty well except some searches are a little lackluster and Duckduckgo, which was recommended to me by an IT guy at work. I’ve had Duckduckgo on my phone for less than a day, but it seems to do the trick. It informed me that it blocked Microsoft from tracking me, which was comforting even though I really can’t verify that I am safer online using these search engines.

Both browsers block ads, plus I have the comfort of knowing that Google isn’t tracking, critiquing, and recording my every search. I don’t want AI to do everything for me. I like thinking about my keywords and refining my search methods. It’s a good workout for my brain. AI can be helpful when I am open to speeding up a task, or exploring AI’s applications with creating curriculum. Other than that, I wish the LLM’s would mind their business.