People ask whether AI can create an index. "Do people still do that?"
At the American Society for Indexing (ASI) and at the Indexing Society of Canada (ISC) over the past few years, members have tested Claude, ChatGPT and Adobe AI Assistant, and found them unusable in that they do not understand context, or how humans read for information. For instance, if you are a researcher, it's impossible to read everything that pertains to your subject. A useable index means that you can check out the literature without reading everything, flip to the back of the book (or enter keywords) and find out whether there is anything that might flesh out your current position in the research. You can find out quickly what other researchers are thinking about.

In short, a good index is trustable. If it's a good index, a reader can see at a glance that it covers most of what is in the book. Footnotes, endnotes and bibliographical information all serve to support the text. The researcher who has compiled the information for the book, can provide feedback to a human indexer and discuss what might have been missed. 

A large language model (LLM) might be able to create an "index-like object", but you, as a human reader/researcher unaquainted with the author, can not have any certainty that the AI has "read" the material in a way that doesn't leave things out. You can't know what's missing — or search for something the AI program hasn't recognized as pertinent to a search, or contextualized in the larger themes of the book. And AI programs miss a lot. They can sound "true" and look like they know stuff. But you can't trust their findings.

If a calculator gave you the wrong answer to an equation, even once - you'd throw it out. Yet because AI gets some of it right, some of the time, we want to believe it. The person who sounds like they know stuff  can be so attractive — until you find out they're lying. AI is sort of like that person. (At least it might apologize). 

For more reading on this subject see the ASI Whitepaper on on AI and Indexing: https://asindexing.org/ai-news/supplement-to-white-paper-ai-and-indexing/

Elizabeth Bartmess: Can the Current Generation of LLMS Produce an Adequate Index? 

​Tanya Izzard: Book Indexing and Generative AI: https://journals.cilip.org.uk/catalogue-and-index/article/view/746

For the legalities around copyright for writers with regards to AI, see Jane Friedman: ​https://janefriedman.com/ai-and-publishing-faq-for-writers/

Heading into my 10th year as a professional indexer in 2023, and in review of that time, I’ve worked with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) digital library (IDL) where I provided abstracts and keyword indexing for enhanced accessibility and retrievability for 11,000 items of research. Most topics of research included aspects of Climate Change Science, agricultural sustainability issues, women in agriculture, and the application of climate, agricultural, medical, and human rights research to local contexts.

Alongside this work, some of the books I’ve indexed for publishers Peter Lang, HarperCollins and University Presses are:

Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream (Alissa Quart); HarperCollins Publishers; [https://www.amazon.com/Bootstrapped-Liberating-Ourselves-American-Dream/dp/006302800X]

A Costly Fix:Power, Politics, and Nature in the Tar Sands (Ian Urquhart); University of Toronto Press; [https://www.amazon.ca/Costly-Fix-Power-Politics-Nature/dp/1487594615]

Conducting Hermeneutic Research (Nancy Moules); Peter Lang; 
[https://www.amazon.ca/Conducting-Hermeneutic-Research-Philosophy-Practice/dp/1433127334]

In Praise of Radiant Beings (David Jardine); Information Age Publishing, Inc. [https://www.amazon.com/Praise-Radiant-Beings-Retrospective-Perspectives/dp/1681236044 ]

On the Pedagogy of Suffering (David Jardine); Peter Lang; [https://www.amazon.ca/Pedagogy-Suffering-Hermeneutic-Buddhist-Meditations/dp/1433125242]

Peak Oil: Apocalyptic Environmentalism and Libertarian Political Culture (Matthew Schneider-Mayerson); University of Chicago Press [https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo21028360.html]

The Power of Heart Language (Monte Taylor); self-published [https://www.amazon.com/Power-Heart-Language-Connect-Influence/dp/1974285642]
​

Privately and on my own time, I’m intrigued to index a previously published but un-indexed book, by one of my favourite authors: Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby. It’s storylines and threads of inquiry work within a reflexive mirroring pattern, which I hope will reveal itself in the structure of the index. I see this as another art project. My other “job” is as an artist. (See also creaturality.wordpress.com)

Last month I was asked by HarperCollins NY to produce an index for author Alissa Quart for “Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves for the American Dream, to be released next spring https://www.amazon.com/Bootstrapped-Liberating-Ourselves-American-Dream/dp/006302800X​ .

As the self-employed know, and those of us who’ve been in the gig-economy before there was even a term for it, a lot of the time you are flying by the seat of your pants, working hand-to-mouth. When most people had full-time work, “freelance” was seen to be creative, or innovative - and / or liberating from the nine-to-five lifestyle. Richard Florida’s “Creative Class” was something that many people yearned to be a part of. In the 90’s on the heels of privatization and devolution, we were admonished to ‘follow your bliss’ and all of that ‘do-what-you-want-and the-money-will-follow’ forward-thinking’ capitalistic monetization of ideals and ideas.

When the pandemic shit met the fan, the hollow bottom of the freelance /gig-economy was spattered and revealed, as people started to drown. Except for the richest, the trickle-down economy hasn’t worked. Tax cuts for the rich over the past 30 years have actually sunk more boats than have been raised. This aspect is also well-covered in this very readable book.

The book reflects on realities of working people in America during the COVID-19 pandemic. The healthcare crisis amplified negative social effects of ‘rugged individualism’ built into “the American Dream.” That dream is over; it has failed, often experienced as personal ‘failure’ rather than accumulated fallout from bad social policy (and not being born wealthy).

It’s great to read a book that covers all the weaknesses that the “self-employed” have understood for many years but may have understood as personal failure, rather than bad policy. This includes lack of access to: workplace unionization; childcare; elder care, paid care work, and food security. At least here in Canada, the meritocracy still gives most people a chance, and we don’t have to pay our entire lifesavings for healthcare (yet- and I’m talking to you, Doug Ford). I loved this book and its’ awareness-raising chapters that de-mythologize the Dream of individual control over ‘success’. I love the index that I created for it. Two themes were: liberation from the American Dream, and pandemic effects on…