Libraries as necessary sites for refusing faux fables of technofascism and imagining otherwise

Our world has recently become infested with AI hype, powerful rhetoric about the too-good-to-be-true potential of “artificial intelligence” technologies to transform our existence, and librarianship is no exception. In the United States, AI has emerged in a context where librarians are handling several interrelated crises that make their work both more necessary and difficult, including the increased reliance on public librarians to fill welfare gaps, censorship campaigns leveraged against librarians who provide children with diverse reading material, rising operating costs, and rapid rates of burnout among staff. Nowhere in Big Tech’s declarations of AI’s transformative potential have these material challenges been meaningfully addressed. Instead, we see what Benjamin [22] calls “Faux Fables deciding our collective fate,” (p. 21) where the illusion of seamless technological integration is sold as a utopic vision over which we have no control. As one of our last-standing democratic institutions, where anyone can access vital social services, reliable information sources, and trained, friendly staff, many librarians are already engaged in a practice of refusal, which requires grappling with the ways library discourse both sustains and resists the oppressive systems that enable technofascism through rapid AI deployment. The power of librarians to model an ethics of refusal is rooted in their close relationships to their community and demonstrated commitment to serving their needs. An ethics of refusal has the potential to reaffirm librarians’ vital role in cultivating a world where we all have the agency to participate in creating the future.