05/20/2026
Don’t Be Afraid of the Library Assistant
AI and I have a great relationship: it pretends to understand what I’m asking, and I pretend to understand how it works! Several months ago, I jumped on Gemini (Google’s AI search engine) and entered the following: “The kids are finally out of the house, and I have an empty nest. What should I do first?” Within seconds, Gemini responded with a rather concerned, step-by-step guide on how to safely remove twigs from my gutters without disrupting the bird’s natural habitat, even adding: “Do not touch the nest with your bare hands, as the mother bird may reject it.” Oh, Ms. Gemini, you’re so funny! I’m not literally an Ornithologist! I wanted advice as to fun, exciting, new things to tackle in life without kids in the house.
Although I share a comical story, my hope is to calm your fears about the growing concern with AI. Trust me, I’m right there with you! The truth is, AI is not going away. She’s here to stay. She’s growing and changing things in our world quickly. And when I truly ask myself the question, “Are you afraid of AI”? I would say no. I’m not afraid of AI’s ability or replacing me in the workforce. I will use her to the best of my ability to set myself apart from my competitors. So let me do my best to explain to you my analogy of AI and why it gives me peace of mind in this crazy, ever-changing world! (And yes, I refer to AI as a “she”. Ask any man and it’s the woman that knows everything!)
I think of the internet as a massive, infinite library. The library is made up of data, literature, and resources that numerous people have placed there. AI is the Library Assistant that utilizes the internet to retrieve specific information at lightning speeds!
First, AI has a photographic memory of everything on the internet. She is not experiencing or thinking about the world, she is scanning her memories of the entire library to connect definitions, words, and ideas. FACT: AI does not know what a Panhandle sunrise looks like, but she can describe it based on humans writing numerous poems or papers describing a sunrise.
Second, AI summarizes the topic for you. If I were to walk into a library and ask, “I need to understand the economic impact of Pearl Harbor,” a human Library Assistant would point me to the History section and hand me three textbooks about the subject. AI takes that question and goes further. She instantly flips through those textbooks, pulls the most relevant information, and writes a clear, concise summary tailored for you. FACT: AI can summarize information for a Kindergartener or a Professor at Texas Tech; she summarizes based on your style and reading level. She can even add humor to her response.
Finally, although AI is helpful and incredibly fast, she makes mistakes. She can provide misprints, misinterpretations, or goes as far as providing you with a piece of historical fiction as if it were a factual textbook. She is only as good as the prompt given. She does the heavy lifting and gathering, structuring, drafting and summarizing. You must know how to ask the correct question. FACT: Always fact-check her work, add the personal tone, and apply humanistic or emotional components to the output. She has no feelings. She has no experience. She is not human.
At the end of the day, AI isn’t here to replace the writer, the researcher, or the thinker. She’s here to take the grunt work out of the deep dive. By treating AI as your ultimate Library Assistant—relying on her massive memory and quick summaries, while keeping a sharp eye on her occasional missteps—you can supercharge your workflow without losing your unique voice. The Library Assistant handles the stacks; you still write the story. -- April Bates
