Impacts on the profession: Exploring the opportunities and problems of large language model artificial intelligence (AI) tools for health services library service delivery.

Abstract

This presentation explores applications of Large Language Model Artificial Intelligence tools in health librarianship. The use of these advanced AI tools, such as ChatGPT, are likely to be a major disruptive technology for librarianship as a profession, sooner than expected. Health Librarians will need to learn quickly, how to maximise the enormous opportunities and benefits of ChatGPT technologies while also developing the critical analytical skills necessary to mitigate possible unethical or unsound uses. ChatGPT offers librarians efficiency opportunities to deliver on any number of routine information processing tasks. Its application in consumer health information services could also have genuine value. What ChatGPT cannot do right now, is prove it is an implicitly trustworthy tool in scientific methods of enquiry and systematic review, upon which, best evidence medicine rests. While there are an inconceivable number of librarian-led opportunities, there are almost as many cautions, concerns and questions for our profession to examine over the next five years. ChatGPT technology will certainly change the way most humans interact with and parse knowledge and AI generally, is already impacting health services delivery in unprecedented ways. It is in our profession’s best interests to be across the possibilities of this and other AI tools like it, so they are a useable and trustworthy force for human good.