Fantastic Futures. AI-conference

Can Artificial Intelligence learn Dewey and assist our patrons?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the way we access, manage, and process information, which in turn is having a dramatic impact on knowledge production. Libraries will need to play a central role in the preservation and dissemination of knowledge in this new environment.

As more and more memory and knowledge institutions’ collections become digital while continuing to expand, we are already observing significant consequences for their upkeep. For the past two years the National library of Norway has experimented with Machine Learning (ML) for library purposes, named after the famous public librarian Nancy Pearl, our AI “Nancy” has worked both with cataloging and analyzing parts of out collection. Based on a limited set of experiments, its already obvious that AI/ML represents a new level in library development. We will present some of the results of this work during the conference.

Some of the leading thinkers in the field will participate in the conference, addressing both the opportunities and the challenges that the AI revolution poses to the world in general, and to knowledge institutions specifically, amongst them assistant professor, author and journalist Meredith Broussard, who will talk about how AI not only helps us interpret the world, but also misinterprets and brings bias to it, and CEO of Yewno Ruggero Gramatica, who will address the question of how AI/ML can help us structure the information in the collection of libraries in new ways. A series of organisations including the Danish library central and the oil company Equinor, will share their experiences with AI in analyzing big data or structuring information.

By tracing the ideology of Artificial Intelligence and robotics to ancient myths and literary stories George Zarkadakis will explore how the automation of the human intellect is redefining three of the most fundamental human experiences: how we produce economic value, how we relate with each other, and how we govern ourselves.

Leaders, technologists, researchers, librarians, and users from university and national libraries worldwide are hereby invited to this first major conference on AI/ML in the library sector, and a conversation about how these technologies are changing our world.

We will use the conference as a platform to develop a library community focused on the application of a wide range of AI technologies to internal processes as well as services that deliver information to our patrons. There will be workshops and roundtables after the conference, and we will host an outreach conference on IIIF Thursday 6th December.

The conference is a collaboration between the National Library of Norway and Stanford University Libraries

For further information please contact Ingjerd Skrede at the National Library of Norway

The conference is now fully booked and the registration is closed.

Programme

Morning session

08.30-09.00 Coffee

09.00-09.15
Welcome remarks by Minister of Culture Trine Skei Grande.

09.15-09.30
Welcome remarks by Aslak Sira Myhre, National Librarian of the National Library of Norway

09.30-09.35
Nancy Pearl, rewarded librarian, inspiration for the Archee McPhee «Librarian Action Figure» , and namesake of the AI at the National Library of Norway

Keynote Lectures

09.40-10.15
Work, Love, Polis
George Zarkadakis
Writer, science communicator, Artificial Intelligence engineer and digital innovation professional.

10.20-11.05
How AI misunderstands the world.
Meredith Broussard
Data journalist and assistant professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University, an affiliate faculty member at the Moore-Sloan Data Science Environment at the NYU Center for Data Science, and a 2019 fellow at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute.

11.10-11.30 Break 20 min

11.35-12.05
Cognitive semantics and information: a new frontier for knowledge economy  Ruggero Gramatica; Ceo of Yewno.
Yewno develops conceptual discovery environments for libraries and cultural organizations with AI, maching learning and neural networking.

12.10-13.10 Lunch 60 min

Afternoon – current practical perspectives in libraries

13.15-13.35
Computing the classics
Barbara McGillivray The AlanTuring institute. McGillivray’s research at the Turing Institute focus on computational models for semantic change. She develops machine-learning models for the change in meaning of words in Latin and English.

13.40-14.10
Nancy, the AI-librarian, experiences from the National Library of Norway
Svein Arne Brygfjeld; the National Library of Norway. Brygfjeld has led the development of the digital library at NLN, and is now heading NLN’s innovation on machine learning and artificial intelligence.

14.15-14.35
Machine learning and inspiration
Christian Boesgaard; Christian is the lead data scientist at DBC. DBC’s main task is to develop and maintain the bibliographic and IT infrastructure in the Danish libraries. Christian has lead the adaptation of machine learning at DBC, including work on metadata creation from full texts and recommender systems.

14.40-15.00
Archives, AI and Epidemics
Krish Seetah; Seetah is an environmental archaeologist, Anthropology Dept., Stanford University. Seetah presents work on a proof-of-concept project using AI to model historic, climatic and archaeological data to better predict vector borne disease outbreaks.

15.05-15.25 Break 20 min

15.30-15.50
Equinor, the language riddle, AI and safety offshore
Jennifer Sampson; Principal Data Scientist, Equinor.

15.55-16.25
Library-Inspired Artificial Intelligence
Catherine Nicole Coleman;  Colman is the Digital Research Architect at Stanford University Libraries, working within the Digital Library Systems and Services groups

Closing session

16.30-16.55
A panel discussion chaired by Michael Keller, Stanford University library. Keller is the University Librarian of STU.

16.55-17.00 Thank you and good night

Links:
Conference main page
Practical information