AI and information science: a thematic issue

Abstract

Perhaps it was not surprising that a call for papers on generative AI systems and information science should attract 44 submissions, given that the topic attracts such attention not only in the scholarly press, but also in the daily news and trade publications. Dealing with so many submissions has tested our voluntary system to the limits, with referees and copyeditors performing magnificently to get papers into production: they have our sincere thanks.

The papers taken together document the field of information science broadly, grappling with what it means to study how people seek, evaluate, and use information when the systems mediating that activity are themselves generating, filtering, and shaping the information in question. That is a genuinely new situation, and the research gathered here reflects both the intellectual energy it has released and some of the conceptual difficulties it has exposed.