Our speaker looks at the dynamic between human and artificial intelligence, tracing the development of AI and its impact on society. She discusses society’s shift toward valuing intellect and explores institutional influences and common concerns such as job loss, ethics, and social fragmentation in an AI-driven world. Drawing parallels between myths and technology, she stresses the essential roles of human intellect, ethics, and cooperation. She views AI as a tool for progress, offers strategies to understand and adapt to AI’s complexities, and emphasizes that humans remain vital to harmonious coexistence with intelligent machines. Her metaphors and stories not only anchor understanding of humans and AI in digital intelligence today, but recognize that things like AI accuracy have always been a concern of digital intelligence and not something unique to AI. She shares insights and ideas for supporting communities in their learning and discovery as they move forward in an AI world.

With a focus on understanding the nature of how people use large and complex collections of information in useful ways to create an attractive, comprehensible, evocative user experience of that information, Russell shares tips on the design of information experience; sensemaking; intelligent agents; knowledge-based assistance; information visualization; multimedia documents; advanced design and development environments; design rationale; planning; intelligent tutoring; hypermedia; and human/computer interfaces. At Google, he developed a practice as a search anthropologist—someone who tries to understand how people search, what kinds of things they seek, and how their tools influence their search process. Since then, he looks more at how people understand AI systems and tools more generally. Hear his thoughts for the future.

Our knowledgeable and engaging speaker is a leader in the field of misinformation, verification, and user-generated content and co-author of the foundational report, "Information Disorder: An Interdisciplinary Framework for Research and Policymaking" for the Council of Europe in 2017. Wardle discusses the current information landscape and today's hot topics. She looks at the disconnect between evidence-based experts and "do your own research" trends, which can be amplified by AI tools. She suggests strategies for effective online communication and community engagement. With increasing levels of distrust, she shares lessons we can learn from online influencers and participatory disinformation communities and how we discern what is true and false and provides some theories and frameworks to help situate us as we adapt to our new AI-powered realities. She is full of insights for librarians and information professionals.

Our speakers, who have held roles in corporate organizations, developed programs for training library folk and information professionals, experimented with AI, and more, share their ideas on the next generation of libraries. Hear their thoughts on what skills are needed in the library world and how we can build towards a more resilient future.