Using hands-on activities and demonstrations, this program will highlight the intersections between artificial intelligence, censorship, and the freedom of information. Legislation that bans whole categories of books has libraries looking for solutions, and some have even started using AI tools to try to comply with increasingly aggressive censorship. Similarly, AI is already being used by government and industry to make decisions in critical areas like law enforcement, healthcare, and employment. We will explore the inherent algorithmic bias in AI models and discuss the dangers of relying on AI and allowing algorithms to limit intellectual freedom and shape our lives.

Presenters

Dykee Gorrell is the Digital and Data Literacy Librarian at San José State University’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library. She leads campus-wide initiatives in digital and data literacy and provides data services to support research across the university. She holds an MSLIS from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and is an award-winning scholar and technologist; her 2020 paper, “Designing Trans Technology,” received the Best Paper Award at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. She is currently writing her first book, a critical history of information infrastructure that interrogates the colonial logics shaping how information is organized.

Sharesly Rodriguez is the Artificial Intelligence Librarian at San José State University’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, where she specializes in integrating, evaluating, and educating about artificial intelligence in academic libraries and on campus. She holds a master’s degree in library and information science and previously served as the UX Librarian, implementing the library’s first AI chatbot. With a background in UX research and a long-standing interest in AI, her work now includes consulting on AI research, projects, promoting AI literacy, and studying responsible AI use in higher education, with a focus on ethics, transparency, and equitable access.

Nick Szydlowski is the Digital Scholarship Librarian at San José State University’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, where he is the work lead for the library’s Digital Scholarship Services department and an active contributor to the Digital Humanities Center. His research on the intersection of intellectual freedom and social justice has been published in the Journal of Intellectual Freedom & Privacy and Research on Diversity in Youth Literature.

Join the SJSU King Library and the San José Public Library — in partnership with the SJSU Pride Center, SJSU College of the Humanities & the Arts, SJSU Department of Humanities, SJSU Center for Steinbeck Studies, SJSU School of Information, Santa Clara City Library, California State Senator Dave Cortese, SJSU Department of English & Comparative Literature, SJSU Department of African American Studies, SJSU Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, and the SJSU Artistic Excellence Programming Grants — as we celebrate Banned Books Week with a week's worth of events highlighting our right to read freely.