Meet the New Librarian

A few weeks ago, Apple introduced its new 4S iPhone.  Baked into the operating system was Siri, a voice interactive artificial intelligence.  More than just a voice interface, Siri is also (at least to the degree that the iPhone’s sensors allow) contextually aware and has search capability.  While she can be used for tasks as simple as setting up calendar reminders, she can also aggregate information.  And unlike other voice interactive AIs, Siri’s creators went to great lengths to give her an appealing persona.  So she’s not just an interface, she’s also interactive. 

In a test question of “Find me the best gas prices” Siri said she couldn’t make a recommendation on which one to choose, but found the nearest five gas stations and their prices for me.  This shows she can’t make qualitative judgment calls yet.  But Siri has been enough of a hit that she’ll be further developed and honed.  It may be that Siri will become the first widely available commercial AI (although a “weak” AI). 

Being paranoid about my livelihood I started to wonder: What does this mean for librarians and information brokers? 

In specialized settings like mine, I think librarians distinguish themselves from the rabble in two ways.

1. The ability to translate the client’s context into search strategies.
2. The ability to use sophisticated information retrieval tools.  While most people have access to information tools, they either use them really poorly or don’t know how to use them at all. 

I’m not going to prophesy that Siri is the end of librarianship.  Right now she’s about as skilled in collecting information as a high school senior.  But I do think that Siri’s ability to contextually aggregate information makes her a potential disruptor for librarians. 

The real question is how much Siri will eventually be leveraged to perform complex searches and aggregation.  If she’s only used for simple tasks (example: Find me movie times.  Find me local Thai restaurants. Etc. etc.) then she won’t be any more disruptive than Google has already been.  (Google, by the way, has to be worried about what this technology will to its search business.)  If that’s the case, then it’s likely that she’ll be just another tool librarians leverage more effectively than the rabble to provide high quality, targeted information. 

But what if/when she gets smarter?  What happens to the library profession when true artificial intelligence is cheaply and commercially available?  What then will be our place?  How will our profession work alongside and/or leverage AIs to do new and different work?  

No answers.  Only questions.  But its important that the field start looking in this direction.