Update: The AI at my local library went from useless to helpful in about 8 months

I used to ask their help chatbot for book recommendations and it would just give me random bestseller lists... it was so bad I stopped trying. I went back last week and it actually suggested three specific sci-fi novels based on me liking 'Project Hail Mary', and one was perfect. The librarian said they switched from a basic rule-based system to using something like OpenAI's API back in January. Has anyone else seen a public service AI get this much better this fast?

3 comments

3 Comments

hannah40019d ago

That's wild it got that good that fast. I'm curious if the library had to do a ton of work to make it useful, like feeding it their whole catalog or training it on librarian notes. Or did they just plug in the new AI and it sort of figured out the collection on its own?

stone.lisa19d ago

Hey hannah400, maybe I'm just old but I feel like it had to be a ton of work. I mean, my phone still autocorrects simple words wrong, so an AI just "figuring out" a whole library seems like a stretch. They probably had to feed it everything and then some.

spencer_park2618d ago

Wonder if the library had to pay for API calls. Those costs can add up fast, especially if every patron starts asking for deep recommendations.