Bibliotekarien som access point : En undersökning av artificiell intelligens inom svenska bibliotek

Sammanfattning: Introduction. Artificial intelligence is growing in society at large and within libraries specifically. There are both positive and negative consequences of this development. In this essay, ethical issues concerning bias, transparency and integrity are examined in a Library and Information Science context. Method and theory. Qualitative survey questionnaires with questions about how the libraries work with AI, the informant’s thoughts on ethical problems with it and how they saw the library’s future with AI were created and sent to employees at research libraries in Sweden. Nine answers to the questionnaires and one article formed the data for analysis. Employing Anthony Gidden’s structuration theory, the essay uses concepts like access point, ontological security and reembedding of trust. Analysis. A qualitative content analysis was carried out on the data. The analysis employed a thematic sectioning of the analyzed text, where the themes were developed through content analysis of the analyzed data in relation to the previous research presented in the essay. Results. Five different themes were sectioned out from the data; bias, integrity, transparency, curation and media- and information literacy. The answers were sectioned into these themes and compared to what the previous research said about the subject. The results are presented in a thematic overview where each section analyses the answers in the specific theme. Conclusion. When using and developing AI, the libraries can use ethical guidelines and curation to be aware of and counteract building bias into the systems. An important part of the libraries’ work for the development of the democratic society is media- and information literacy and teaching about information technology, which AI and the way it is developed is a part of. This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.