u/ceramicplates

Hello library people! Looking for some advice and other perspectives.

I am an instruction librarian. During interviews, I made it clear to the IT team that I had no interest in generative AI and was glad that they did not have any classes on it. I explicitly stated that I disagreed with its use for ethical and sustainable reasons, and my boss shared my opinion.

Shortly after starting this job, my boss told me that our library entered a year-long partnership with a large tech corporation to provide AI education to the public and to library staff. We'll be given lesson plans but will have freedom to make changes as needed to suit our specific audience, and we'll be required to provide at least 2 of these classes per week for around a year. The library is receiving a large sum of money from the tech corporation as well, to be spent on the IT department, so it functions as a kind of grant.

Some of my concerns are as follows:

• How can I provide an ethical education on applying gen AI to the people's lives when my library has been paid by one specific (and major) corporation? How can I avoid feeling like I'm a salesman for a tech corporation, rather than a librarian?
• How can I provide classes on applying for jobs and creating resumes while simultaneously providing classes on using gen AI instead of human beings for clerical work? Do I tell the classes about each other?
• How can I provide an education to people at all when I feel as though educating them on this specific topic is rotting my soul?
• Is it better to leave even though I enjoy the rest of this job, or to stay since I can at least have some control over the education library staff and customers receive on this subject?

I am really unsure of how to handle this ethically. I am well educated on LLMs in general and keep up with news about it, because I am an information professional; it's our responsibility to know how to help people with information searching, and that includes knowing about the ways in which people are doing it on their own. However the thought of teaching people about how to use it, with money given to my library from one massive corporation, and without extensive review of the countless ethical and sustainable concerns, is filling me with dread.

I am not looking to debate the sustainability or ethics of gen AI--I am looking for advice on how to handle this kind of situation in an ethical way. Part of me feels like I was tricked into taking this job without knowing about their plans for this partnership, and the other part of me just feels like this side of librarianship is not one I want to be on.

Thank you for any advice you all might have!