Libraries Gear Up to Put AI in a Terrarium
August 7, 2026
Are you tired of Big Tech and AI invading your life? You aren’t the only one and librarians are also sick of it. What some of them are doing to combat the rise of AI and Big Tech is hosting events that are AI free events as told to TechCrunch in the story: “Librarians Are Hosting Viral ‘Avoiding AI’ Workshops For People Who Are Fed Up With Big Tech.”
One librarian named Charlie Bailey in Philadelphia started hosting these events, because he felt that AI tools were foisted onto people without their permission. He runs the events like this:
“Bailey starts the hour-long workshop with an overview of how AI chatbots and other consumer AI tools work, explaining why people might want to use these products, and why they might opt to abstain. Then he walks through all of the most popular tech platforms and devices, showing step-by-step instructions on the projector to guide people through turning off specific features.”
Bailey wants people to remember that they can think and do stuff with AI:
“ ‘As a librarian, I think it’s important to see this as advancing digital literacy and helping people reclaim their autonomy over whether they want to use AI tools,’ Bailey said. ‘It’s important, especially when it can be so difficult not to use them, and when the design seems to force adoption.’”
For many of the participants who attend the AI workshops, they don’t reject the technology. They want more control and freedom over how it is being integrated into their lives. Another librarian Hannah Cyrus said:
“ ‘I think the forced adoption of AI on people’s devices might be the straw that’s breaking the camel’s back in some ways,’ she said. ‘The awareness has been growing for a long time that these products and these companies that make them have an outsized influence over us, and that we’re not really using these products in the way that we would like to.’”
Remember that humans control the technology not the other way around. Digital literacy and information literacy are more important these days as machines take away the thinking. I want more libraries to put AI in a terrarium and put the focus on reading and thinking for oneself.
Whitney Grace, August 7, 2026
From Tech First to Tech Worst in the Classroom
August 5, 2026
In my opinion, an entire generation of students are going to be mentally wonky because they were educated with screens. I fear that these young people will be outsmarted by a gerbil or a rock. Fortune in “Hey, we told you so” article, “Schools Across America Are Quietly Admitting That Screens In Classrooms Made Students Worse Off And Are Reversing Years Of Tech-First Policies” is pointing out what quite a few people thought was obvious. Schools are learning that assigning everything student a laptop wasn’t the best idea when it comes to obtaining knowledge that allows a student to perform well on standardized tests. (Sure, I know standardized tests arrive with tons of scuffed and scattered luggage. Nevertheless, some can be useful.)
The clued in Fortune article says:
“Citing the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), Horvath said: “Frequent in-class computer use correlates with significantly lower math and science performance across both high-income and middle-income countries.” This study showed fourth-graders’ and eighth-graders’ test scores correlated with whether they were using laptops almost never on the high-end versus almost daily on the low-end.”
Laptop manufacturers have had an influence on public schools. Laptops sold to schools promise to increase student performance. Whether a Mac, Windows laptop, or Chromebooks, the with-it education professionals bought the pitch hook, line, and sinker. Who wants a student to use an outdated laptop. Therefore, upgrade. Could that money be used for other education-related actions; for example, paying teachers pumping up in-service training, or providing certain classes with an in-class human aid to assist the student in his or her learning?
After a couple of decades of doing the techno-boogie, some schools have figured out that technology has to do more than create doomscrolling masters. Some instructors are making students take notes with pen and paper as Abraham Lincoln did. In the US, Gen Z is notable because it allegedly is the first generation not to score higher than their predecessors in measures of academic achievement:
“Distractions are a major culprit of this degradation of learning, Horvath previously told Fortune, adding that refocusing attention after it’s been diverted takes time to recover. Educational systems “screwed up,” he told Fortune. ‘And I genuinely hope Gen Z quickly figures that out and gets mad.’”
Gen Z might be mad, but they also might be too distracted by their screens to get upset. Take that back, they’ll make a TikTok rant, wait for it to go viral, then become outraged. Emotions are based on what’s trending these days. But what about Fortune’s intense, timely coverage of this issue?
Okay, just decades after the digital assault on learning began.
Whitney Grace, August 5, 2026
Reverse AI Fibonacci: The Spiral of Stupid
July 21, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I read an interesting article in the online publication Tech Radar. Its title? “‘Quality Decays Exponentially Following AI Arrival’: Research Shows Experts and Contributors Leaving Online Communities Amidst Silent Knowledge Reset.” I am not going to illustrate my view point with one of those MBA hockey stick diagrams. Nope, I am going with the Fibonacci sequence or what I call the Spiral of Stupid. First, though, let’s look at what the write up says.
Here we have a professor explaining the Fibonacci inversion; that is, start with a large value IQ and decrement according the the algorithm. The result is that the person relying on social media ends up an intellectual zero. Hey, don’t like my blunt statement? Just go to a local store and pay in cash. Watch the expression on the face of the young person at the smart cash register. Better yet, ask a college student what Fibonacci is. Thanks, MidJourney. I like the teacher’s shirt. Very TikTok.
I noted this passage:
AI, which arguably bridges the gap between most entry-level and mid-range coders and some of the best in the business, might actually be accelerating the latter’s exit from online communities, as they feel their efforts are no longer as valued as they once were. Stack Overflow has seen a nearly 76% decline in monthly questions posted since ChatGPT’s advent in 2022, indicating that both new and existing users are abandoning the site.
One lousy online community, and the sky is falling. The article doesn’t share my larger concern about the impact of AI on education, authentic discourse, and respect for intellectual property’s knowledge value.
The write up adds:
… researchers indicate it could spill over into other areas such as classrooms, offices, and other research communities, where low-effort answers are harder to discern from those of subject-matter experts thanks to ever-evolving, retrained AI models.
Indicate? I think one might want to use a more pointed work. How about “demonstrate” or “make evident” or “know.” But that’s too direct. One would not want to raise broader intellectual issues about smart software, would one?Here’s
I circled this statement in the article:
“If everybody can create a good quality response or output using AI, some people may think, ‘Why should I make an effort to share my expertise and participate?”, publisher of the study Dr Kenny Ching explained. Ching termed this ‘signal compression’ as expert and non-expert solutions became harder to separate, even as it became less rewarding to be a subject-matter expert on topics that AI could also easily weigh in on.
Okay, very delicate. I am a dinobaby, and I am clumsy too. Therefore, I shall offer several observations:
- AI is a short cut to appearing smarter than one actually is.
- Use of AI eliminates the need to do the grunt work that allows a person to internalize certain information and knowledge patterns, and learn to use the recognition of these patterns in fresh, and hopefully for some, interesting and novel ways to create “new” information.
- AI is supposed to be the next big thing. What’s it delivered? Crazy behavior from large companies that should know about measured decision making and prudent governance of their institutions. Students who cannot read but who can watch TikTok-type videos for extended periods of time. Researchers who fake data to get grants or click along the tenure track. Smart weapons that are mostly accurate. Mostly. Just don’t ask too many questions, please.
Net net: This is not just a Stack Overflow problem. This is THE problem for any knowledge value activity.
Stephen E Arnold, July 21, 2026
Ah, Academia: The Industrialization Of Scientific Fraud
December 15, 2025
Everyone’s favorite technology and fiction writer Cory Doctorow coined a term that describes the so many things in society: Degradation. You can see this in big box retail stores and middle school, but let’s review a definition. Degradation is the act of eroding or weathering. Other sources say it’s the process of being crappy. In a nutshell, business processes erode online platforms in order to increase profits.
According to ZME Science, scientific publishing has become a billion dollar degradation industry. The details are in the article, “We Need To Talk About The Billion-Dollar Industry Holding Science Hostage.” It details how Luís Amaral was disheartened after he conducted a study about scientific studies. His research revealed that scientific fraud is being created faster than legitimate science.
Editors and authors are working with publishers to release fraudulent research by taking advantage of loopholes to scale academic, receive funding, and whitewash reputations. The bad science is published by paper mills that are manufacturing bad studies and selling authorship and placements in journals with editors willing to “verify” the information. Here’s an example:
“One such paper mill, the Academic Research and Development Association (ARDA), offers a window into how deeply entrenched this problem has become. Notice that they all seem to have legitimate-sounding names. Between 2018 and 2024, ARDA expanded its list of affiliated journals from 14 to 86, many of which were indexed in major academic databases. Some of these journals were later found to be hijacked — illegitimately revived after their original publishers stopped operating. It’s something we’ve seen happen often in our own industry (journalism), as bankrupt legitimate legacy newspapers have been bought by shady venture capital, only to hijack the established brands into spam and affiliate marketing magnets.”
Paper mills doubled their output therefore the scientific community’s retractions are now doubling every 3.5 years. It’s outpacing legitimate science. Here’s a smart quote that sums up the situation: “Truth seeking has always been expensive, whereas fraud is cheap and fast.”
Fraudulent science is incredibly harmful. It leads to a ripple effect that has lasting ramifications on society. An example is paper from the COVID-19 pandemic that said hydroxychloroquine was a valid treatment for the virus. It indirectly led to 17,000 fatalities.
AI makes things worse because the algorithms are trained on the bad science like a glutton on sugar. But remember, kids, don’t cheat.
Whitney Grace, December 15, 2025
Academics Lead and Student Follow: Is AI Far Behind?
July 16, 2025
Just a dinobaby without smart software. I am sufficiently dull without help from smart software.
I read “Positive Review Only: Researchers Hide AI Prompts in Papers.” Note: You may have to pay to read this write up.] Who knew that those writing objective, academic-type papers would cheat? I know that one ethics professor is probably okay with the idea. Plus, that Stanford University president is another one who would say, “Sounds good to me.”
The write up says:
Nikkei looked at English-language preprints — manuscripts that have yet to undergo formal peer review — on the academic research platform arXiv. It discovered such prompts in 17 articles, whose lead authors are affiliated with 14 institutions including Japan’s Waseda University, South Korea’s KAIST, China’s Peking University and the National University of Singapore, as well as the University of Washington and Columbia University in the U.S. Most of the papers involve the field of computer science.
Now I would like suggest that commercial database documents are curated and presumably less likely to contain made up information. I cannot. Peer reviewed papers also contain some slick moves; for example, a loose network of academic friends can cite one another’s papers to boost them in search results. Others like the Harvard ethics professor just write stuff and let it sail through the review process fabrications and whatever other confections were added to the alternative fact salads.
What US schools featured in this study? The University of Washington and Columbia University. I want to point out that the University of Washington has contributed to the Google brain trust; for example, Dr. Jeff Dean.
Several observations:
- Why should students pay attention to the “rules” of academic conduct when university professors ignore them?
- Have universities given up trying to enforce guidelines for appropriate academic behavior? On the other hand, perhaps these ArXiv behaviors are now the norm when grants may be in balance?
- Will wider use of smart software change the academics’ approach to scholarly work?
Perhaps one of these estimable institutions will respond to these questions?
Stephen E Arnold, July 16, 2025
AI Produces Human Clipboards
July 16, 2025
![Dino 5 18 25_thumb[3]](https://www.arnoldit.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Dino-5-18-25_thumb3-1.gif "Dino 5 18 25_thumb[3]")
No smart software involved with this blog post. (An anomaly I know.)
The upside and downside of AI seep from my newsfeed each day. More headlines want me to pay to view a story from Benzinga. Benzinga, a news release outfit. I installed Smartnews on one of my worthless mobile devices. Out of three stories, one was incoherent. No thanks, AI.
I spotted a write up in the Code by Tom blog titled “The Hidden Cost of AI Reliance.” It contained a quote to note; to wit:
“I’ve become a human clipboard.”
The write up includes useful references about the impact of smart software on some humans’ thinking skills. I urge you to read the original post.
I want to highlight three facets of the “AI problem” that Code by Tom sparked for me.
First, the idea that the smart software is just “there” and it is usually correct strikes me as a significant drawback for students. I think the impact in grade school and high school will be significant. No amount of Microsoft and OpenAI money to train educators about AI will ameliorate unthinking dependence of devices which just provide answers. The act of finding answers and verifying them are essential for many types of knowledge work. I am not convinced that today’s smart software which took decades to become the next big thing can do much more than output what has been fed into the neural predictive matrix mathy systems.
Second, the idea that teachers can somehow integrate smart software into reading, writing, and arithmetic is interesting. What happens if students do not use the smart software the way Microsoft or OpenAI’s educational effort advises. What then? Once certain cultural systems and norms are eroded, one cannot purchase a replacement at the Dollar Store. I think with the current AI systems, the United States speeds more quickly to a digital dark age. It took a long time to toward something resembling a non dark age.
Finally, I am not sure if over reliance is the correct way to express my view of AI. If one drives to work a certain way each day, the highway furniture just disappears. Change a billboard or the color of a big sign, and people notice. The more ubiquitous smart software becomes, the less aware many people will be that it has altered thought processes, abilities related to determine fact from fiction, and the ability to come up with a new idea. People, like the goldfish in a bowl of water, won’t know anything except the water and the blurred images outside the aquarium’s sides.
Tom, the coder, seems to be concerned. I do most tasks the old-fashioned way. I pay attention to smart software, but my experiences are limited. What I find is that it is more difficult now to find high quality information than at any other time in my professional career. I did a project years ago for the University of Michigan. The work concerned technical changes to move books off-campus and use the library space to create a coffee shop type atmosphere. I wrote a report, and I know that books and traditional research tools were not where the action was. My local Barnes & Noble bookstore sells toys and manga cartoons. The local library promotes downloading videos.
Smart software is a contributor to a general loss of interest in learning the hard way. I think smart software is a consequence of eroding intellectual capability, not a cause. Schools were turning out graduates who could not read or do math. What’s the fix? Create software to allow standards to be pushed aside. The idea is that if a student is smart, that student does not have to go to college. One young person told me that she was going to study something practical like plumbing.
Let me flip the argument.
Smart software is a factor, but I think the US educational system and the devaluation of certain ideas like learning to read, write, and “do” math manifest what people in the US want. Ease, convenience, time to doom scroll. We have, therefore, smart software. Every child will be, by definition, smart.
Will these future innovators and leaders know how to think about information in a critical way? The answer for the vast majority of US educated students, the answer will be, “Not really.”
Stephen E Arnold, July 16, 2025
We Have a Cheater Culture: Quite an Achievement
July 8, 2025
The annual lamentations about AI-enabled cheating have already commenced. Professor Elizabeth Wardle of Miami University would like to reframe that debate. In an opinion piece published at Cincinnati.com, she declares, “Students Aren’t Cheating Because they Have AI, but Because Colleges Are Broken.” Reasons they are broken, she writes, include factors like reduced funding and larger class sizes. Fundamentally, though, the problem lies in universities’ failure to sufficiently evolve.
Some suggest thwarting AI with a return to blue-book essays. Wardle, though, believes that would be a step backward. She notes early U.S. colleges were established before today’s specialized workforce existed. The handwritten assignments that served to train the wealthy, liberal-arts students of yesteryear no longer fit the bill. Instead, students need to understand how things work in the present and how to pivot with change. Yes, including a fluency with AI tools. Graduates must be “broadly literate,” the professor writes. She advises:
“Providing this kind of education requires rethinking higher education altogether. Educators must face our current moment by teaching the students in front of us and designing learning environments that meet the times. Students are not cheating because of AI. When they are cheating, it is because of the many ways that education is no longer working as it should. But students using AI to cheat have perhaps hastened a reckoning that has been a long time coming for higher ed.”
Who is to blame? For one, state legislatures. Many incentivize universities to churn out students with high grades in majors that match certain job titles. State funding, Wardle notes, is often tied to graduates hitting high salaries out of the gate. Her frustration is palpable as she asserts:
“Yes, graduates should be able to get jobs, but the jobs of the future are going to belong to well-rounded critical thinkers who can innovate and solve hard problems. Every column I read by tech CEOs says this very thing, yet state funding policies continue to reward colleges for being technical job factories.”
Professor Wardle is not all talk. In her role as Director of the Howe Center for Writing Excellence, she works with colleagues to update higher-learning instruction. One of their priorities has been how to integrate AI into curricula. She writes:
“The days when school was about regurgitating to prove we memorized something are over. Information is readily available; we don’t need to be able to memorize it. However, we do need to be able to assess it, think critically about it, and apply it. The education of tomorrow is about application and innovation.”
Indeed. But these urgent changes cannot be met as long funding continues to dwindle. In fact, Wardle argues, we must once again funnel significant tax money into higher education. Believe it or not, that is something we used to do as a society. (She recommends Christopher Newfield’s book “The Great Mistake” to learn how and why free, publicly funded higher ed fell apart.) Yes, we suspect there will not be too much US innovation if universities are broken and stay that way. Where will that leave us?
Cynthia Murrell, July 8, 2025
Stanford University Students and Their Entrepreneurial Drive
May 9, 2025
Signal is useful for more than spreading state secrets. One enterprising resident of the San Francisco Bay Area used the encrypted messaging service for a different shady endeavor. SFGate reports, “Stanford Grad Sentenced for ‘DoorDash-Style’ Drug Trafficking Service.” 31-year old Natalie Marie Gonzalez was sentenced to over four years in federal prison for leading the operation. She and three co-conspirators were first indicted in 2023 after a raid turned up almost a kilogram of fentanyl, about seven kilograms of cocaine, some ketamine, methamphetamine masquerading as Adderall, and other illegal drugs. That is quite the selection. The service included creative measures designed to hide the fact that meetups were actually drug deals. Reporter Madilynne Medina describes the operation:
“The drug trafficking service operated from April to September, 2023. According to the attorney’s office, customers would place orders from ‘a menu of drugs for sale’ through the encrypted messaging system Signal. Orders required a $300 order minimum for the delivery, and Gonzalez paid her co-conspirators to work as drivers. Per the criminal complaint, an undercover agent first used the service to order cocaine and 2,000 fake Adderall pills that contained meth. Gonzalez instructed the agent to ‘hop in’ the car for a short ‘‘‘Uber” ride around the block’ to cover up the drug transaction when the driver arrived with the delivery on March 29, 2023. The agent then made multiple other purchases. During one of the sales in July 2023, the agent was even given the option to play with a dog to cover up the drug deal, the complaint shows. According to the agent, Gonzalez said her customers were ‘a lot of students and young professionals.’”
Ah, modern technology. Four years in prison is no fun but, as Medina reports, the maximum penalty Gonzalaz faced was 20 years and a $1 million fine. Let us hope she finds more above-board uses for her innovation once released. Stanford University is an interesting institution: Synthetic data and synthetic contraband. Will the individual get to rub shoulders with the former Stanford president who resigned due to research irregularities. Pacesetters indeed.
Cynthia Murrell, May 9, 2025
Stamping Out Intelligence: Censorship May Work Wonders
April 9, 2025
Sorry, no AI used to create this item.
I live in a state which has some interesting ideas. One of them is that the students are well educated. At this time, I think the state in which I reside holds position 47 out of 50 in terms of reading skills or academic performance. Are the numbers accurate? Probably not, but they indicate that learning is not priority number one in some quarters.
A young student with a gift for mathematics is the class dunce. He has to write on the chalk board, “I will not do linear algebra in class.” Thanks, OpenAI. Know any budding Einsteins in Mississippi?
However, there is a state which performs less well than mine. That state is Mississippi. Should that state hold the rank of the 50th less academically slick entity in the US. Probably not, but the low ranking does say something to some people.
I thought about this notion of “low academic performance” when I read “Mississippi Libraries Ordered to Delete Academic Research in Response to State Laws.” The write up says:
A state commission scrubbed academic research from a database used by Mississippi libraries and public schools — a move made to comply with recent state laws changing what content can be offered in libraries. The Mississippi Library Commission ordered the deletion of two research collections that might violate state law, a March 31 internal memo obtained by Mississippi Today shows. One of the now deleted research collections focused on “race relations” and the other on “gender studies.”
So what?
I find it interesting that in a state holding down the 50th spot in academic slickness assumes that its students will be reading research on these topics or any topics for that matter.
I did a very brief stint as a teacher. In fact, I invested one year teaching in a quite challenging high school environment about 100 miles south of Chicago. If my students read anything, I was quite happy. I suppose today that I would be terminated because I used the Sunday comics, gas station credit card application forms, job applications for the local Hunt’s Drive In, and a wide range of printed matter. My goal was to provide reading material that was different from the standard text book, a text book I used when I was in high school years before I showed up at my teaching job.
The goal is to get students reading. Today, I assume that removing books and research material is more informed than what I did.
Several observations:
- Taking steps to prevent reading is different from how I would approach the question, “What should be in the school library?”
- The message sent to students who actually learn that books and research materials are being removed from the library seems to me to be, “Hey, don’t read this academic garbage.”
- The anti-intellectualism which this removal seems to underscore means that Mississippi is working hard to nail down its number 50 spot.
I am a dinobaby. I am quite thrilled with this fact. I will probably fall over dead with a book in my hands. Remember: I used outside materials to try to engage my students in reading for that one year of high school teaching. I should have been killed when a library stack fell over when I was in grade school.
These types of decisions are going to get the job done for me I think.
Stephen E Arnold, April 9, 2025
Sweden Embraces Books for Student: A Revolutionary Idea
February 14, 2025
Yep, another dinobaby emission. No smart software required.
Doom scrolling through the weekend’s newsfeeds, I spotted “Sweden Swapped Books for Computers in 2009. Now, They’re Spending Millions to Bring Them Back.” Sweden has some challenges. The problems with kinetic devices are not widely known in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, and probably not in other parts of the US. Malmo bears some passing resemblance to parts of urban enclaves like Detroit or Las Vegas. To make life interesting, the country has a keen awareness of everyone’s favorite leader in Russia.
The point of the write up is that Sweden’s shift from old-fashioned dinobaby books to those super wonderful computers and tablets has become unpalatable. The write up reports:
The Nordic country is reportedly exploring ways to reintroduce traditional methods of studying into its educational system.
The reason for the shift to books? The write up observes:
…experts noted that modern, experiential learning methods led to a significant decline in students’ essential skills, such as reading and writing.
Does this statement sound familiar?
Most teachers and parents complain that their kids have increasingly started relying on these devices instead of engaging in classrooms.
Several observations:
- Nothing worthwhile comes easy. Computers became a way to make learning easy. The downside is that for most students, the negatives have life long consequences
- Reversing gradual loss of the capability to concentrate is likely to be a hit-and-miss undertaking.
- Individuals without skills like reading become the new market for talking to a smartphone because writing is too much friction.
How will these individuals, regardless of country, be able to engage in life long learning? The answer is one that may make some people uncomfortable: They won’t. These individuals demonstrate behaviors not well matched to independent, informed thinking.
This dinobaby longs for a time when tiny dinobabies had books, not gizmos. I smell smoke. Oh, I think that’s just some informed mobile phone users burning books.
Stephen E Arnold, February 14, 2025
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