Forum examines role of libraries in artificial intelligence era

FALLS VILLAGE — Anthony Marx, president of the New York Public Library, said the country’s largest library is maintaining its core values while encountering serious challenges.

Marx spoke at Housatonic Valley Regional High School Friday evening, Nov. 7, in a Salisbury Forum presentation.

Marx started working at the NYPL in 2011. He said that until he took the job he didn’t realize that while the library has almost 100 branches, none of them are in Brooklyn or Queens.

“We are not a city agency,” he said, while acknowledging that some 60% of the library’s revenue comes from city coffers. “It makes for interesting conversations at budget time.”

The library has a $1.48 billion endowment and raises between $80-100 million in private fundraising per year.

Marx said one big challenge is misinformation, which “spreads faster than truth.” He cited discouraging trends, such as a national decline in reading in general and long-form reading in particular, and shortened attention spans driven by the use of smart phones.

He said that despite the radical increase in communications capabilities, isolation is on the rise.

The good news, he continued, is that people are using the NYPL more than ever, in different formats (books, audiobooks, podcasts).

A related challenge is artificial intelligence. Marx said “for the first time in 130 years” people are checking citations with the NYPL’s librarians, only to find the citations are phony.

“AI is hallucinating,” Marx said, and the designers care more about speed than accuracy.

“We care a lot about truth and accuracy.”

He said the solution for the NYPL is to provide training in AI and to use it to enhance the services the library already provides.

He noted the NYPL has 65 million books, give or take. The goal is to make as much of the collection as possible available online.

Many books are out of print but still under copyright protection. In these cases, Marx argued that the library isn’t harming the copyright holders, since the book isn’t available anyway.

And if enough people request a certain title, perhaps a publisher would be willing to bring out a new edition.

“AI can help with that.”

Ultimately the NYPL will create its own AI, “based on our collection so you can trust it.”

Marx said the NYPL’s branch libraries have historically functioned as outposts of education and community involvement. The NYPL is the largest provider of English as a Second Language classes in the city.

“And yes, we teach immigrants, and we don’t ask about their status because we don’t want them found through us.”

Marx said the library is also trying new things, such as building 175 units of affordable housing over one branch, and using branch libraries as a hub to broadcast free broadband wifi because “between 1.5 to 2 million New Yorkers do not have broadband at home.”

And the branches themselves are being renovated. “We’ve spent a billion so far.”

Marx said, despite the headwinds, “we don’t change what we do. We double down.”