Category: Legal
-
Guardrails don’t fit with scholarship
This is a fascinating summary of a big problem with some AI-enhanced library products: The AI powered Library Search That Refused to Search (Aaron Tay). The link to the ACRLog post is also worth a read: “We Couldn’t Generate an Answer for your Question”. In a nutshell, it appears that Microsoft Azure's OpenAI content filter,…
-
One of the best uses of GenAI I’ve seen yet – CanLII the Canadian Legal Information Institute
A colleague alerted me to the existence of this project, which had flown under my radar. The Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII) has used "a commercially available Large Language Model (LLM)" to generate summaries of primary case law, and legislative documents for Alberta, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, and Saskatchewan. It's the summaries of legislative documents…
-
With whom did Danielle Smith actually consult on her transgender rights policy?
In January 2024, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced "sweeping changes to Alberta's student gender identity, sports and surgery policies" aimed at the province's transgender community. According to news reports, "Alberta’s premier says she’s had many conversations with members of the trans community before and since drafting a suite of policy proposals dealing with transgender rights."…
-
Seeking Alberta FOIP advice
I recently put in a FOIP request to the Alberta Executive Council and got a pretty quick response that no records exist (EC000-2024-G-10 closure letter). I asked for clarification, and received, "Based on your very specific request for a list, a thorough search was undertaken to locate the records, and it was discovered that no…
-
Vaccine Injury Support Program – Statistics – not working in Wayback?
I've been using Visualping.io to watch for changes on the Vaccine Injury Support Program – Statistics page since I became aware of it, and I thought I was sending changes to the Wayback Machine as well, but after today's update I realized that when I visit the snapshot on Wayback, the captured page claims "No…
-
New Artificial Intelligence LibGuide
I wish I'd put it together, but it was my colleague, Bronte Chiang, who just released this fantastic LibGuide on Artificial Intelligence. It's not a hard-science guide, but "…has been created for students and instructors to explore how to responsibly and ethically use AI in their work. There is information about how to critically engage…
-
Library Futures Funtime Book Talk w/Chokepoint Capitalism and Data Cartels
On November 17, I was able to attend most of an amazing book talk sponsored by Library Futures. It was with the authors of two timely books, Chokepoint Capitalism (Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow), and Data Cartels (Sarah Lamdan). You can, and should, watch the entire recording! In Chokepoint Capitalism, "by analyzing book publishing and…
-
Wonder Tools – New ways to record conversations
Because of my role supporting qualitative data analysis at MPOW, I'm always on the lookout for new transcription tools (see my current list here). The latest issue of the Wonder Tools newsletter introduces several new-to-me automated tools to record conversations. As a bonus, Jeremy includes many links to StoryCorps resources on how to improve interviewing…
-
Why you should pay attention to your Creative Commons licenses
I have never given a second thought to ensuring I've chosen the correct/most recent version of a creative commons license. That's changed, because I just finished reading Cory Doctorow's post, A Bug in Early Creative Commons Licenses Has Enabled a New Breed of Superpredator. In it, he outlines the emergence of the Copyleft troll, someone…