TL;DR version: if you would rather read my latest book, Triptych, without the distraction of AI, then I have put out a new AI Free version. You can buy the new edition on Amazon. The content is the same, save for illustrations and AI generated discussion questions. New cover is from licensed stock art. The content is virtually identical in other ways (with a few edits made).
The first published version of Triptych used artificial intelligence to create images and a series of conversation starters used at the end of each lecture. As I stated in that version:
“I take my responsibility as an author and as a scholar seriously. That means having full ownership of the text and in writing from a place of experience… For me it [AI] is a tool and one I feel I need to use to better understand and write about. That said, I very much look to engage in a conversation about AI, the mission of librarians, and its impact in society.”
And a conversation was indeed had. Several reviewers and people I respect pointed out a key problem with including some AI-generated material in the book: it introduces a sort of fatigue when engaging the text. While a reader wants to be engaging the ideas, the even peripheral use of AI adds a sort of lingering doubt. Is what I am reading written by AI?
That seed of doubt persists and interferes with the purpose of the text. Instead of thinking about the ideas, you start to look for em-dashes (which I’ve always used and so they are still in here–just not added by AI). It is a lingering doubt that is not necessary, particularly when the purpose of the text is not to demonstrate AI.
So here is my AI-Free version*. That asterisk at the end, however, means something. I wrote this in Microsoft Word. Word uses AI and machine learning algorithms in spellcheck and their edit function. I searched the web that relies increasingly on AI models. The book production tools I used on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform use AI in their features.
I’m also not sure I would have ever ended up seeing the need for this edition, or indeed the whole book, without starting with AI. Having used AI to generate the slides for the original lectures; all the playing with AI tools like NotebookLM and Gemini mattered. It shaped my admittedly muddled endorsement of artificial intelligence and was important to shaping how I think. Simply put, I never would have thought about creating an AI-free edition had I not created the AI “enhanced” version first.
But this is now as AI-free as my previous titles. The original version of the book is still available. I still stand by that work and still hope it generates useful conversation. However, the ideas in here are too important to let some images and conversation starters get in the way.
Last note, I did take the opportunity of making a new version to clear up some minor errors and make the few included images easier to read.
Many thanks, David.