Information as Currency: The Social and Cultural Value of Knowledge in the Algorithmic Age

Abstract

In recent years, generative artificial intelligence (AI) content has been integrated into
everyday life. Generative AI tools produce meal plans and shape travel itineraries, often
without clear source acknowledgment or attribution. Rapid expansion of generative AI
warrants renewed attention and focus on the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy
in Higher Education’s Information Has Value frame. Novice learners have difficulty understanding
the value of information when free information is abundant.1 Generative AI
further complicates this and issues of authorship, equity, and trust. In the algorithmic
age, information operates as economic, social, and cultural currency with its value being
shaped equally by technologies, human intentions, and novice learners’ assumptions about
AI authority. Unlike value, which suggests a fixed