Reality Check: A Guide to Navigating the AI Information Flood

Join the Friends of the Dartmouth Libraries on Thursday, August 27, at 6:30 p.m. to hear Laura Gardner, Teacher Librarian at Dartmouth Middle School, and Mariah Tarentino, Development and Communications Coordinator at YWCA Southeastern Massachusetts, discuss how artificial intelligence works, why it creates convincing misinformation, and how baked-in bias shapes its answers. Audience members will learn practical tools to help confidently verify images and text. The presentation will be held at Dartmouth North Branch Library.

Laura Gardner, a National Board Certified Teacher in Library Media, is the Teacher Librarian at Dartmouth Middle School in Dartmouth, where she has worked for over 15 years. She was named a School Library Journal (SLJ) School Librarian of the Year Co-finalist in 2016 and has served on national book award committees, including the Newbery. Laura has attended multiple workshops on the ethical, limited use of AI in education and regularly presents at the local and state levels on teens, screens, and misinformation.

Mariah Tarentino serves as the Development and Communications Coordinator at YWCA Southeastern Massachusetts and has over ten years of experience in the visual and communications fields. Her academic foundation includes a B.A. in Art History with a focus in media theory and contemporary sociopolitical art, complemented by additional continuing education classes at the Rhode Island School of Design. Deeply engaged with contemporary visual culture, she maintains a keen awareness of how AI is reshaping media representation, communication standards, and creative industries.

The presentation will be held at Dartmouth North Branch Library, an accessible facility, which is located at 211 Cross Road, Dartmouth. For more information, please e-mail fodl.libraries@gmail.com.

211 Cross Road Dartmouth, MA 02747 United States