As AI chatbots replace internet search, digital literacy could get worse

Artificial intelligence is rapidly integrating into internet searches and significantly changing how we find information.

What does this mean for digital literacy? Is AI helping or hurting people’s ability to access, evaluate, use and create digital information?

Heidi Julien, professor of information science in the Graduate School of Education, is an expert in digital literacy. She says that using AI exclusively for internet searches can provide inadequate or erroneous search results, thus hindering people’s digital literacy. Julien believes this is becoming a widespread problem requiring attention at the education policy level.  

Julien recently spoke with UBNow and offered some perspective on the collision course of AI and digital literacy.

People should not rely on AI exclusively for search engine results

“The bottom line is that LLMs (large language models) such as ChatGPT are not actually search engines. They work very poorly compared to existing search engines such as Google. When people use LLMs as search engines, they are unlikely to understand this and don’t understand that the results they are getting may well be incomplete, inaccurate or just made up. Those who have the opportunity for formal digital literacy training, such as that provided by academic librarians in higher education, can learn these kinds of nuances, but unfortunately, most people have poorly developed digital literacy skills and these are just as poor in the AI context.”

AI can be damaging to digital literacy

“The fundamental issue here is that the lack of digital-literacy understanding and skills is a widespread problem and one that requires attention at the policy level. Especially in the current context, that is increasingly unlikely.” 

Digital literacy needs to be viewed as a critical skill in education policymaking

“Ideally, educational policy would recognize the urgency of this topic area and ensure that school curricula, from early years, included significant attention to this skill set. This is certainly the case in other countries, notably Finland. Unless digital literacy is recognized as critical to positive social, academic, personal (for example, health) and employment outcomes, it is going to continue to be minimized, under-resourced and ignored. The outcome of this approach is a population that is insufficiently knowledgeable and skilled to adequately interact with these technologies in ethical and effective ways. We are all bowled over by AI hype without analyzing its true value and impacts (material, ethical and environmental), and we are overconfident in our ability to harness these technologies in positive and useful ways.”