AI Isn’t Coming for Information Professionals … But Only If We Engage as Partners
By Michael Ridley
Editors Note: This is part of our series from speakers and attendees of our AIIP 2026 Symposium. Michael will be presenting this topic Friday, April 9 at 7:00 pm ET. Register here.
Once again, it’s an honour to be speaking at the AIIP symposium whose members I consider my peers.
Of course, I’ll be talking about AI. Isn’t everyone? Are you bored of it all yet?
Last year, we talked about the importance of explainability: the imperative of AI to explain why and how it made decisions and recommendations. Still important IMHO. But things move on, and quickly, in AI.
We now have reasoning systems, AI agents, bots that go rogue, and Sam Altman continuing to say ridiculous (and terrifying) things. Here’s an example of a recent observation from the CEO of OpenAI: “We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter.” And by “us” he of course means him.
So, given all this, why am I going to suggest that AI should be your partner? Not a tool, not just an augmentation … a partner. A business partner.
My first personal encounter with AI happened many years ago when I was a new librarian, very much wet behind the ears. It was 1987 (yikes) and I was trying to build an expert system to answer reference questions at the information desk of the Health Sciences Library at McMaster University. I had high hopes. It was a disaster.
However, many lessons were learned: AI is hard; the problems are hard too. But the promise was there.
There is a saying that AI is whatever we haven’t done yet. As soon as we build a system that does intelligent things, it is no longer the benchmark for AI. Spam filtering, language translation, medical imaging … all of these are mainstream now. They are all AI-based but we no longer think of them that way.
Finding out what AI can do for our field and for us as practitioners is why we are invested in AI even if it troubles us. We are information professionals, and AI is the greatest advance in information technology and information practices since … ever?
Talking about AI as a partner allows us to explore the boundaries; where are we with this innovation? This is our field; these are our challenges.
I’m going to talk about how I see it. And then, I am even more interested in how you see it.
Michael Ridley
Librarian Emeritus (Guelph); PhD (Western)
Proudly, Defiantly Canadian.
