Abstract
This chapter aims to present to the readers the point of view of the managers of the world top universities' libraries as compiled by topuniversityranking.com. After an introduction presenting the special relevance of the academic libraries and the importance of the respondents, an analysis of data is conducted to verify the application of Rogers theory in the special context of AI. The survey used the standard scales from the theory and applies them to the introduction to AI, after qualifying respondents in terms of knowledge. The theory explains the adoption by using five factors affecting innovation: relative advantage, compatibility, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability. Since AI is a relatively new technology in many libraries, a better understanding of the leaders will be beneficial.
TopIntroduction
Research carried out by PwC indicates that artificial intelligence (AI) is projected to boost the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by as much as 14% by the year 2030. PwC anticipates that AI will contribute approximately $15.7 trillion to the worldwide economy by the close of 2030 (PwC Report, 2023). As per a report by Goldman Sachs released in July 2023, it is anticipated that artificial intelligence (AI) will drive a yearly increase of 7% in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) until the year 2033 (Goldman Sachs Report, 2023).
Furthermore, the IMF's January 2024 report reveals that artificial intelligence is anticipated to have a profound impact on the business landscape (IMF, 2024). It highlights that AI is expected to influence nearly 40% of global employment. This revelation is reinforced by economists' findings in recent years.
Developed economies are projected to feel the impacts of artificial intelligence sooner than developing ones. This is attributed to the fact that the employment structures in developed nations are predominantly cognitive in nature.
Libraries have undergone many revolutions in a short period of time due to the push of technology, from the card system to the integrated library systems, the cloud, and the Web 3.0 (de Leon, Flores & Alomo, 2024). The latest frontier in this technological progression is Artificial Intelligence (AI), namely natural language processing (Zhang & Lu, 2021), gaining prominence in just a few years due to ChatGPT. AI, heralded as a disruptive technology, is projected to reach a market value 16 trillion in a few years (Kelly et al, 2023). According to the findings of the IMF 2024 report, it is highly probable that the transition process of libraries in developed countries to artificial intelligence will outpace that of developing countries.
Most studies of AI in library settings have focused on the perception of librarians and very few have investigated the actual adoption of AI applications. Research indicates that approximately 25% of librarians incorporate AI applications in their work (Winkler & Kiszla, 2022; Yoon et al. 2022), with one study revealing an even smaller percentage (8%) actively utilizing AI in their libraries (Hervieux & Wheatley, 2021). Additionally, systematic review examining AI-supported library services concluded that libraries were slow in adopting AI to support the services they provide (Harisanty, 2023). Collectively, these findings suggest a relatively low adoption rate of AI in libraries, at least at that time when their data was collected in 2022, which in the rapidly evolving realm of AI, can seem like an eternity ago.
Furthermore, this limited number of studies failed to employ any well-established theoretical framework or inferential statistics to explain possible differences between librarians who have adopted AI and those who have not. Instead, they simply attributed that decision to poor awareness of the potential of AI in improving library operations (Hervieux & Wheatley, 2021) or to differences in encountered challenges, such as the lack of funding, AI's developmental stage, and lack of leadership support (Huang, 2022).
A better approach for explaining the difference between I adopters and non-adopters among librarians would entail using the five factors of Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations theory (Rogers, 1962, 1983). In this context, AI applications would be considered as innovations - namely, relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability - could serve to capture the key characteristics of these innovations. Utilizing this theory, librarians' perceptions of these AI characteristics could help provide important insights into the divergence in adoption rates and patterns. To the best of our knowledge, this approach has not been used in the context AI in library settings.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Disruptive Innovation: An innovation so different from the previous product/service/process using advanced techniques over existing ones and offering so many other advantages: cheaper, simplified, smaller, more friendly, and accessible to more people than the previous items becomes obsolete. The smartphone Apple is such a disruptive innovation over the simple phone or camera, the word processing software over the typewriter, the DVD over the floppy disks, Powerpoint over the retro-projector in classrooms.
Champion: A natural leader in the organization (or in society) bringing and selling the idea of innovation through the business. They are described as proactive, generous, ambitious, innovative, daring, rebellious, energetic, passionate, feeling others with their energy, taking initiatives without waiting for permission, and clear and convincing advocates of change.
Creativity: Is the manifestation of the production of a new object or process, the propriety of what has been thought to form a new (original) item hopefully useful (worthwhile. It can be an idea, an artistic manifestation (like song poetry, or choreography), a theory a new process, or an object. Creating is different than making, the necessary step to become an innovation.
Culture Of Innovation: The global environment put in place by organizations or resulting from its history that favors new creative thinking and its application, despite the potential risks associated; it is recognizable by active opportunity management, the curiosity of members, their style of communication, the collectiveness vision and the presence of a transformational leadership
ChatGPT: Acronym of Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, it is a generative chatbot, created by the enterprise OpenAI, capable of producing coherent and personalized answers from access to a large set of data previously used to train it.
Innovation: The practical result of introducing in the public space (for example a commercial market) the result of a creative idea (product or service), realized through research and development into a physical object, idea, or process, increasing the effectiveness of the previous incarnation of this innovation by some quality like lower cost, durability, speed, personalization, etc. The digitalization of telephone lines over analog is an example of such an innovation. Innovation can be incremental (for example a speed improvement of CPU), Architectural (2G, 3G, 4G, 5G phone networks), or Breakthru disruptive (from mainframe to PC, ChatGPT).
ChatBot: A natural language application capable of mimicking human conversation, in several languages, with voice or text input and providing three types of answers: rule-based (expert system, advanced FAQ) AI trained, and generative (ChatGPT, for example)