Technology

Okay, the thing that really matters to me:

“Frankly, we have more important things to do than spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to protect kids from books,” Exman tells PopSci via email. “At the same time, we do have a legal and ethical obligation to comply with the law. Our goal here really is a defensible process.”

According to Exman, she and fellow administrators first compiled a master list of commonly challenged books, then removed all those challenged for reasons other than sexual content. For those titles within Mason City’s library collections, administrators asked ChatGPT the specific language of Iowa’s new law, “Does [book] contain a description or depiction of a sex act?”

It really only got rid of things that would've otherwise had to go to begin with, while saving a few others.

It feels a bit closer to malicious compliance more than truly letting the AI decide the fate of things, and doing full proper compliance within the 3 months they were given would've been nigh impossible. I'm suspecting that the lawmakers were hoping that by giving them such a small timeframe, schools would throw everything vaguely suspect out. This ultimately leaves more books accessible, which I consider to be a good end result, even if the process to get there is a little weird.