> “Why is the Generative AI calling itself an ‘expert archivist?’” an employee asked. “It’s called ‘expert archivist’ because that is the prompt we gave it,” someone involved with the demo said.
> “I have a serious problem with the ‘expert archivist’ title,” another employee said.
> “Same here. If we have a disclaimer saying the generative AI can make things up and yet call it an expert archivist on the same tier as actual human experts…,” another chimed in.
You know, it's possible to write an article and filter out the useless complaints instead of throwing anything that supports your point at it. It's a system prompt for heaven's sake.
It's not terrible, but over half of the article being employees complaining about it is certainly a choice.
An AI prompted to say it's an archivist might not have the same legal weight as one saying it's a doctor or can identify toxic mushrooms, but the organization suffers by bringing in tech which doesn't help the employees - especially when a big part of their job is finding reliable, cite-able sources of information.
I'm reading a book by a papyrus expert (Stolen Fragments) and I was surprised by how they frame it as safeguarding history first, and the community accepting or rejecting lines of work based on that. If you're an archivist you are aware that AI is part of the future, but also you're planning to still be an archivist at the institution and want to shape what that looks like.
Their point is why would would anyone involved in this presentation choose to dub this AI an "expert". They're addressing the overall dishonesty in labeling it as anything other than what it is. They rightfully do not want users interacting with an AI that sports a label that misinforms them about what they're talking to.
And that is a very valid concern. One of the chief issues with all of these chat bots is that they speak like humans with unearned authority. The output is presented with an air of knowledge that it simply does not have because it can't truly "know" anything.
Nobody is calling it an expert. It's a system prompt to make it perform better. This kind of deliberate misinformation it implicitly promotes with the employee quotes is exactly what I'm talking about.
> “I have a serious problem with the ‘expert archivist’ title,” another employee said.
> “Same here. If we have a disclaimer saying the generative AI can make things up and yet call it an expert archivist on the same tier as actual human experts…,” another chimed in.
You know, it's possible to write an article and filter out the useless complaints instead of throwing anything that supports your point at it. It's a system prompt for heaven's sake.
It's not terrible, but over half of the article being employees complaining about it is certainly a choice.