{"id":19077,"date":"2026-06-03T13:39:05","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T13:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_7\/?p=19077"},"modified":"2026-06-03T13:39:05","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T13:39:05","slug":"doctor-ai-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-free-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_7\/2026\/06\/03\/doctor-ai-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-free-market\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctor AI, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Free Market"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This is part of a series of blog posts from hospital librarians using AI in their work. This post was s<\/em><em>ubmitted by <strong>Beth Merkle<\/strong>,\u00a0Lead Librarian for Acquisitions &amp; Collections at\u00a0University of Rochester Medicine (NY).<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-19078\" src=\"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_7\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2026\/06\/Picture1-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"Teachers: Just log into Zablezoot, scroll down to the Zorkle app and have the kids work on the assignments sent through Krackelzam or check the links posted in Zumblekick. Parents: [screen capture of actor Mark Wahlburg looking confused and harried]\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_7\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2026\/06\/Picture1-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_7\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2026\/06\/Picture1-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_7\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2026\/06\/Picture1.jpg 318w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A viral meme circulated on social media in Spring 2020, as bizarrely named apps and online platforms such as Kahoot, Canvas, and School Tool became the only way school happened during the pandemic:<\/p>\n<p>The utterly bewildered Mark Wahlburg in the meme could be medical librarians today, with vendors and marketers and corporate gurus telling us:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>The future of patient care is CorpusMagk! <\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Streamline your research with ComplexitrrPRO! <\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Make your ERM work smarter with LabGabber 4.0!<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A volley of AI-enhanced platforms, agents, bots, wizards, and assistants are being launched onto the market. Before the dust settles in your inbox another notification appears, touting yet another new app. There is no way to keep up with it all, but we \u2013 librarians and medical practitioners alike \u2013 feel the pressure that we must and we should.<\/p>\n<p>Zhang-Ren Chen writes in \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-026-01214-3\">AI FOMO: everyone is mastering AI except me \u2014 or are they?<\/a>\u201d about his shift away from anxiety in thinking about the myriad \u201cbreathless product launches\u201d that fill his inbox to a more circumspect view:<\/p>\n<p>Trying to keep up while an underlying technology is shifting so rapidly is often wasted effort. The most effective users I know \u2014 colleagues in bioinformatics who use AI daily and collaborators at AI labs who build these systems \u2014 are not always the first to try everything. More often, they are the ones who wait just long enough for the signal to separate from the noise: for real use cases to emerge, failure modes to become visible and the community to converge on what works.<\/p>\n<p>In essence, to stay on top of AI you can stop trying to stay on top of AI. Detached observation is the best strategy while we wait for the <a href=\"https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/markets\/stocks\/articles\/ai-bubble-debate-gets-real-130007767.html\">AI Bubble to burst<\/a>. Most of the products you hear about today won\u2019t be here in six months \u2013 the competitive market and rapidly advancing innovations will weed them out.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some newsletters and podcasts that can help you keep half an eye on AI while letting the frantic noise slip by mostly unnoticed. I put them in four buckets that feel relevant to what librarians should be observing and considering in AI: Industry, Ethics, Culture, and Medicine. These have all helped me transition from a gloom-and-doom AI skeptic to a cool, calm, and collected AI skeptic. Here\u2019s how to use them:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>You can sign up for daily or weekly email newsletters and add podcasts to your feed. As the notifications come in or at a designated time during your weekly routine, scan the titles and summaries to get a sense of the big picture.<\/li>\n<li>Read or listen to what interests you or seems relevant and delete the rest. If you open a bunch of browser tabs with the intent to read them later but don\u2019t get to them in a few days, close them and move on with your life. There will be more notifications tomorrow.<\/li>\n<li>You can bookmark the sites in a folder that you check in one once a week. Click on each page, read or listen to the articles or episodes that speak to you, ignore the rest, and move on with your life.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h4><strong>Industry<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p><em>What happens to our subscriptions to journals and databases with AI in the picture? How will licensing change? How will searching and discovery change?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org\/category\/artificial-intelligence\/\">Artificial Intelligence Archives &#8211; The Scholarly Kitchen<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Scholarly Kitchen is the official blog of the Society for Scholarly Publishing with the tagline \u201cWhat\u2019s Hot and Cooking in Scholarly Publishing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/aarontay.substack.com\/\">Aaron Tay&#8217;s Musings about Librarianship | Substack<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Tay is an academic librarian from Singapore who writes about AI-powered search tools through a librarianship lens on Substack.<\/p>\n<h4><strong>Ethics<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p><em>What happens to the scientific research that medical professionals rely on to make clinical decisions, write policy, or identify best practices?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/retractionwatch.com\/\">Retraction Watch \u2013 Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I think of Retraction Watch as TMZ for scholarly gossip: scientific integrity, article retractions, predatory journals, and AI\u2019s effect on the academic publishing community.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.404media.co\/\">404 Media<\/a><\/p>\n<p>If Retraction Watch is the TMZ for what happens when AI is mixed into the $29 billion plus academic publishing industry, 404 Media is the Black Mirror for AI let loose in every industry and every facet of people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n<h4><strong>Culture<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p><em>What\u2019s going on with AI and what does it mean for our day-to-day lives?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/column\/hard-fork\">Hard Fork &#8211; The New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Hard Fork from the New York Times explores technology in the news and culture broadly. AI is covered frequently, and in many contexts.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/crooked.com\/podcast-series\/offline\/\">Offline with Jon Favreau | Crooked Media<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Crooked Media, a progressive, independent media company, produces a suite of political podcasts. Offline offers a break from online political discourse with \u201cdeeper conversations about the impact of technology and the internet on our politics and culture.\u201d<\/p>\n<h4><strong>Medicine<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p><em>How are clinicians, students, and researchers using and thinking about AI?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ai-podcast.nejm.org\/\">NEJM AI Grand Rounds | NEJM Group<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The New England Journal of Medicine produces this AI Grand Rounds podcast about \u201chow AI will change clinical practice and healthcare, how it will impact the patient experience, and about the people who are pushing for innovation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/channels\/ai\/pages\/podcast\">Podcast | JAMA+ AI | JAMA Network<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Journal of the American Medical Association\u2019s AI Conversations podcast features \u201cinterviews exploring how AI is impacting medicine, from the clinic to the lab to the\u00a0classroom.\u201d<\/p>\n<h4><strong>Closing Thoughts<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>Elvis sang, \u201conly fools rush in.\u201d Aaron Burr sings in Hamilton, \u201cI\u2019m not falling behind I am lying in wait.\u201d The AI landscape is changing so quickly that the best move is observation, measured experimentation, and patience.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is part of a series of blog posts from hospital librarians using AI in their work. This post was submitted by Beth Merkle,\u00a0Lead Librarian for Acquisitions &amp; Collections at\u00a0University of Rochester Medicine (NY). A viral meme circulated on social media in Spring 2020, as bizarrely named apps and online platforms such as Kahoot, Canvas,&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_7\/2026\/06\/03\/doctor-ai-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-free-market\/\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1153,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[256],"tags":[590,119,120],"class_list":["post-19077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communities-of-interest","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-hospital-librarians","tag-hospital-library-advisory-group"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1153"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19077"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19087,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19077\/revisions\/19087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}