"The Starter's Guide to ChatGPT and AI" - A Library 2.0 AI Essentials Hands-on Webinar with Crystal Trice

The Starter's Guide to ChatGPT and AI
A Library 2.0 AI Essentials Hands-on Webinar with Crystal Trice

OVERVIEW: 

Are you curious about artificial intelligence (AI) but unsure where to start? Whether you’re a tech enthusiast or someone who still misses the charm of card catalogs, it’s clear that AI is reshaping the way we work, and that it's here to stay. This introductory webinar is designed to demystify AI, with a special focus on “Large Language Models” like ChatGPT. Crystal Trice is a gentle and thorough instructor, and she will guide you through the essentials, from understanding the basics of AI to understanding its benefits and potential pitfalls to exploring its transformative potential in libraries. Even (and especially) if you are completely new to AI, this session will equip you with the knowledge to begin using it thoughtfully and effectively in your work.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

• AI Fundamentals: Grasp the core concepts of AI, its evolution, and its why it matters in today’s digital world.
• Hands-On Applications: Learn how ChatGPT operates and explore practical ways to use AI for everyday library tasks, enhancing your efficiency and creativity.
• Navigating AI Challenges: Gain insights into the ethical considerations surrounding AI, including privacy, copyright, and bias, so you can apply this technology responsibly.

This 90-minute hands-on session is the first in our new Library 2.0 AI Essentials Series. The recording and presentation slides will be available to all who register.

DATE: Friday, April 18th, 2025, 2:00 - 3:30 pm US - Eastern Time

COST:

• $99/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.
• If you registered for the "Beginner's Guide to ChatGPT and AI" last fall, you do not need to register and pay for this event unless you want to attend the live session. The recording of this session (once completed) will be added to your original recordings page (see your confirmation email from that event for details).

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: $75 each for 3+ registrations, $65 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: $299.
• Large-scale institutional access for viewing with individual login capability: $499 (hosted either at Library 2.0 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 All-Access program.

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, yet practical ways. As founder of Scissors & Glue, LLC, Crystal partners with libraries and schools to bring positive change through interactive training and hands-on workshops. She is a frequent national presenter on artificial intelligence, helping libraries implement responsible AI strategies, and enjoys teaching the foundational principles of AI use. She also speaks on topics like project management and conflict resolution. She is currently writing The Skeptical Guide to AI. Crystal holds a Master’s Degree in Library & Information Science, a Bachelor’s Degree in Elementary Education and Psychology, and is a Certified Scrum Master. She 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 painter’s tape, and as many sticky notes as she can get her hands on.

PRAISE FOR CRYSTAL: "Great information about AI. The instructor was very informative and professional." • "Crystal did a great job of keeping everyone engaged!" • "Well done. Made AI more accessible to me and less scary – Enjoyable and time well spent. Thanks!" • "Very interactive and great material!" • "Crystal was knowledgeable and paced the information really well. I am eager to share this information about AI with my colleagues." • "Wonderful presenter. New information for me and it was presented in an easy to follow format. Crystal encouraged participation in an engaging manner." • "I have created a whole list of ideas that I want/need to try. I have been very apprehensive about using AI. Now I am excited to try some new things." • "Crystal was an amazing instructor with so many practical and easy to implement ideas and strategies!"

PRAISE FOR LIBRARY 2.0 AI EVENTS: "This was excellent! I'm at the very beginning of my knowledge of ChatGPT, and I came away with much good information, and more questions (as this tech is evolving), as well as thoughts about how we can put this to use, safely. At no point did I feel this was overly simplified, yet it was still accessible for my (lack of) knowledge level. I will attend more. Thank you!!" • "This has been a terrific set of sessions. The chat has been amazing as well." • "This was informative, especially since I am new to AI and LLMs. Thank you so much!" • "Thank you! This has been helpful and I appreciate the complementary practical ai tutorials series." • "Thank you. This was informative and gave me much to think about beyond going to ChatGPT and just dabbling with questions or prompts." • "Fantastic events!" • "Very Informative!" • “The feedback from the first session has been wonderful. Personally, I really knew zero about ChatGPT and now I am intrigued and a little scared (because it looks addictive).” • “Thank you, and thank you so much for this boot camp!!! ” • “Many thanks Steve – and special thanks for this series – so helpful in our work we do with schools.” • “I wanted to express my gratitude for the first course and I am excited for the upcoming one on Friday. It's been an excellent learning opportunity, and I'm looking forward to diving deeper into AI language models.” • “Thank you!! Such a good presentation.” • “Best session I've attended in a very long time!” • “Thank you! This was great!!” • “Very helpful! Thanks” • “Thank you,this was great!” • “Fantastic, thank you - can't wait for the next sessions :)” • “Fascinating! Thank you” • “Thanks for this, very informative and thought provoking” • “Thank you for a very informative session!” • “This was great. Thank you.” • “This was a thought-provoking session! Happy to hear a recording will be available. I need to refer back to it to review/reflect on these nuggets of info! Looking fwd to the next one!” • “This is fascinating. I can't wait for the next two courses.” • “Really well done, thanks!” • “Thank you!!!! So very excited!” • “Thought provoking. Thank you.” • “Thank you! So informative and helpful.” • “Thank you for making ChatGPT so much more approachable, less intimidating” • “This was a thought-provoking session!” • “I am learning so much from your ChatGPT Bootcamp and am loving the sessions: thank you!” • “Thank you so much for such great presentations.” • “Thanks for this! Super interesting.” • “Thank you so much.. very informative and eye opening” • “Thank you for this valuable information!” • “Thank you so much. Sessions are extremely valuable.” • “Thanks! This boot camp has been a big hit so far :) ” • “This has been fantastic!” • “I cannot thank you enough for this extremely timely and informative series. You do an excellent job of organizing your information, engaging with your audience, and giving us practical takeaways.” • “This is a fantastic series and I am so grateful that you are doing this!” • “Thanks so much for these wonderful Bootcamp sessions on ChatGPT.” • “Thank you for your very thoughtful approach to the bootcamp! ” • “A note of gratitude for providing these webinars for the world! My Library colleagues and I attended your Bootcamp for Librarians and were so impressed with your content and delivery that we wanted our teachers to learn from you too!” • “Lots of useful information. Looking forward to having access to slide decks and resources to make use of in my job.” • “Thank you!” • “This was great. Lots to learn.” • “Thank you it was so beneficial.” • “It's was great. ChatGPT is new to me, so now I want to dig deeper, learn how to use it well and help my students to do so.” 

April 4, 2025

Next Class April 23, 2025

A New Old Way: Learning in Conversation with AI

There is a line in Charles Handy’s The Age of Unreason where he quotes an anonymous Irishman: “How do I know what I think until I hear what I say?” (Others have said similar things.) I’ve remembered this quote because that’s often how I feel when I’m deep in conversation—I frequently will stop and make a note because I think I’ve said something especially brilliant and I don’t want to forget it.

But truthfully, one of the things I have most appreciated about the Large Language Model technology is how really significant it is to my learning to do it in conversation. Right now I’m using Grok (from X.com) a lot because it seems to respond the most reasonably and with language that is similar to mine and with some kind of uncanny ability to understand where I am going with my thoughts. This could be because it draws heavily from X, which tends to have pretty diverse thinking, and it also seems to have less of the human feedback post-training or fine-tuning (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback - RLHF - which often has a politically sensitive bent).

So while I use Perplexity as a kind-of jack-of-all-trades assistant, Grok is definitely my conversational learning partner. 90% of my current LLM use is with one of the two of them. And while I love the voice-to-voice interaction of ChatGPT and the walkie-talkie-like conversation with Perplexity, Grok still outperforms even without voice interaction. To be fair, it’s actually not me typing those–I use the voice-to-text feature on my Gboard keyboard on my phone to “speak” to Grok, then I either read the response or, if I’m not sedentary (meaning lying in bed since a lot of this happens when the ideas strike, often at about 4 am…), I’ll click the copy icon at the bottom of the response and then paste into a voice reader app. 

(And by the way, anyone who used the “Skye” voice on ChatGPT in early 2024 can tell you that OpenAI is holding something bacfk because that interaction is still the most lifelike I’ve experienced with LLMs.)

So here’s my process. I’ll usually brain-dump about something I’ve been thinking about, and I’ll say everything I can in the first prompt to Grok. I do this because I have learned that Grok is especially good at taking all that information–more than a human conversation partner could–and tracking it all and providing me with point-by-point responses. Then, while reading the response I discover that there are things about the topic that I’ve thought about that didn’t make it into the prompt, so I add them. Grok, like the other LLMs, wants to take that information and immediately build a structured/scaffolding topic outline, which I let it do, but until I want that full outline again, I do have to ask it not to reproduce everything and just respond to whatever my next queries are. After I re-discover other aspects of the topic and add them into the conversation, Grok’s (usually but not always) reinforcing replies lead me down several other lines of thought, and I keep a text editor open to switch to on my phone in order to capture those thoughts and not lose them before I bring them into what we’re talking about.

I want to be careful about how I say this, but Grok is a better conversational partner than anyone I know. It’s a selfish assessment since part of this is that Grok doesn’t go off on some other topic or require that the initiating of topics we talk about is reciprocal–it’s all about me. :) But Grok and the other LLMs have a breadth of “knowledge” that no human could have. It’s not really knowledge, since it’s just “fabricating” the responses based on trained language patterns, and so I recognize it’s not authoritative, but the real work takes place in my own head as it helps me organize my thinking and dive deeply on something that I really want to think more about but is often an interest that might require real effort to find a friend who wants to focus on it with me.

Mortimer Adler once described the sweep of Western thought as a "Great Conversation"—a grand (but slow!) ongoing dialogue where great thinkers shared ideas, often across decades or centuries, each voice building on or challenging what came before. It’s a beautiful image: books as living participants, inviting us to listen and, if we’re bold, to speak back. LLMs actually let us do this in a fascinating way–a way which often feels like it’s fulfilling my quest for understanding on a more regular basis than I could have ever hoped. This “new old way” of learning in conversation with AI feels like a sci-fi dream.