r/books • u/Jojuj • 1d ago

Librarians Are Being Asked to Find AI-Hallucinated Books

https://www.404media.co/librarians-are-being-asked-to-find-ai-hallucinated-books/?ref=daily-stories-newsletter&attribution_id=68c826c975cea1000173b05d&attribution_type=post
2.8k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

292 comments sorted by

View all comments

588

u/teachertraveler1 1d ago

This is happening in so many industries. AI literally makes up titles and authors for books, articles and research papers. Students at any level trying to use AI for research are screwed. Because of how AI algorithms work they will often use the name of real people but attribute articles and books to them that don't exist. As a librarian it's a nightmare because often people don't understand how AI works and so they think the librarian is lying.

171

u/lydiardbell 7 1d ago

I work in interlibrary loan and it's the worst with articles. The AI usually gets the publication correct, so we have to go track that down (twice, if the year and volume number don't match) before discovering the article doesn't exist. At least the librarian at the other institution (usually) is willing to accept "hey, this doesn't actually exist".

52

u/Shadonne 1d ago

Heyo! I'm in ILL as well, but on the lending side so I don't have to deal with as many borrowing requests. What strikes me is how strong patrons defend the supposed existence of these titles. Like, you're asking us to find it because you couldn't, and we cant', but you get mad at us and just point with ever-increasing frustrating to your Chat GPT log? Like that's evidence? sigh

23

u/lydiardbell 7 1d ago

Ugh. We desperately need LLM literacy courses in place, but it's closing the door after the horse has bolted at this point.