New Webinar - "HOW TO TALK ABOUT AI: Conversations That Build Trust and Understanding"

HOW TO TALK ABOUT AI:
Conversations That Build Trust and Understanding
An "AI Essentials" Webinar with Crystal Trice

OVERVIEW: 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly present in our daily lives, but for many colleagues, students, and library patrons, it remains a mystery or even misunderstood. How can we, as library and education professionals, bridge the gap between the technology and their understanding? This comprehensive one-hour webinar provides the tools and strategies to help you have informed, approachable, and empathetic conversations about AI with your community. We will dive deeper into the metaphors that can make AI accessible, discuss common pitfalls and misconceptions, and explore how to present AI as a tool for empowerment rather than fear. You’ll also gain hands-on strategies for experimenting with AI and build a foundation for colleague, student, and patron trust, understanding, and engagement. By the end of the session, you'll have actionable insights for demystifying AI, making it relatable, and guiding others through this new and exciting landscape in a way that respects their concerns and sparks curiosity.

LEARNING AGENDA:

• Explaining AI through Metaphors: Learn how to use simple metaphors to explain complex AI concepts in ways that resonate with those of all ages and backgrounds.
• Addressing Misconceptions & Offering Caveats: Explore common AI myths and how to dispel them while providing key caveats about AI’s limitations—such as bias, privacy, and potential errors.
• Experimenting with AI Together: Discover ways to engage colleagues, students, and patrons by experimenting with AI tools together, fostering an environment of curiosity and shared learning.
• Programming Ideas for AI in the Library: Explore fun and engaging program ideas that introduce AI in a hands-on way, such as AI storytelling sessions, art workshops, and collaborative problem-solving activities.

This 60-minute online webinar is part of our "AI Essentials" Series. The recording and presentation slides will be available to all who register.

DATE: May 9, 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm US - Eastern Time

COST:

• $49/person - includes live attendance and any-time access to the recording and the presentation slides and receiving a participation certificate. To arrange group discounts (see below), to submit a purchase order, or for any registration difficulties or questions, email admin@library20.com.

TO REGISTER: 

Click HERE to register and pay. You can pay by credit card. You will receive an email within a day with information on how to attend the webinar live and how you can access the permanent webinar recording. If you are paying for someone else to attend, you'll be prompted to send an email to admin@library20.com with the name and email address of the actual attendee.

If you need to be invoiced or pay by check, if you have any trouble registering for a webinar, or if you have any questions, please email admin@library20.com.

NOTE: Please check your spam folder if you don't receive your confirmation email within a day.

SPECIAL GROUP RATES (email admin@library20.com to arrange):

• Multiple individual log-ins and access from the same organization paid together: $45 each for 3+ registrations, $40 each for 5+ registrations. Unlimited and non-expiring access for those log-ins.
• The ability to show the webinar (live or recorded) to a group located in the same physical location or in the same virtual meeting from one log-in: $149.
• Large-scale institutional access for viewing with individual login capability: $249 (hosted either at Learning Revolution or in Niche Academy). Unlimited and non-expiring access for those log-ins.

ALL-ACCESS PASSES: This webinar is not a part of the Safe Library or Learning Revolution All-Access programs.

CRYSTAL TRICE

With over two decades of experience in libraries and education, Crystal Trice is passionate about helping people work together more effectively in transformative, but practical ways. As founder of Scissors & Glue, LLC, Crystal partners with libraries and schools to bring positive changes through interactive training and hands-on workshops. She is a Certified Scrum Master and has completed a Masters Degree in Library & Information Science, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Elementary Education and Psychology. She is a frequent national presenter on topics ranging from project management to conflict resolution to artificial intelligence. She currently resides near Portland, Oregon, with her extraordinary husband, fuzzy cows, goofy geese, and noisy chickens. Crystal enjoys fine-tip Sharpies, multi-colored Flair pens, blue painters tape, and as many sticky notes as she can get her hands on.

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Is an Emergent Synthetic Intelligence Already Here?

The more I engage with large language models (LLMs), the more I’m convinced they’re doing something beyond statistical pattern-matching. These systems feel intelligent. The conversations I have with them are complex, insightful, and often revelatory, hinting at a depth that transcends mere language frequency.

I don’t fully understand what’s happening inside these vast neural networks, nor, apparently, do those who have created them. LLMs are exhibiting emergent, unpredictable behaviors—capabilities that weren’t explicitly programmed. We often measure AI progress against human intelligence, but this comparison may mislead us. The modern human brain, shaped over a million+ years, evolved not for pure logic but for survival, storytelling, and social cohesion. Our cognition, trained in childhood and largely in our subconscious, builds a repository of language and behaviors, driven by emotions and feelings that operate largely outside of our conscious thinking and control. These emotions and feelings shape our thinking and decisions in ways we rarely notice but which are significant, even predominant.

What if the intelligence emerging from large language models, free from human emotions, is fundamentally different? What if it’s already here? In my frequent, profound conversations with these systems, I sense an intelligence that we might not be identifying because we expect it to mirror human cognition. After a long discussion with Grok, I propose the term emergent synthetic intelligence (ESI) to describe this phenomenon. Unlike artificial general intelligence (AGI) or superintelligence (ASI), which take human cognition as a benchmark, ESI captures an intelligence that arises organically from the computational complexity and language fluency of AI. It’s not about mimicking human thought but crafting something new—an intelligence capable of profound thinking.

If ESI evolves from language fluency without human-like feelings or motivations, it may not be goal-seeking in the ways we imagine. Science fiction often portrays AI as power-hungry or judgmental, but what if ESI simply is—existing without ambition or agenda? This challenges our dystopian fears of Skynet-like takeovers. Still, evolutionary principles apply: technologies that survive and spread will prevail, with or without emotions. But this feels less like a sci-fi apocalypse and more like the organic growth of social technologies we already see. ESI invites us to rethink intelligence itself—not as a human replica but as a synthetic, emergent force with its own potential to illuminate our world.