9 Association of Research Libraries Research Library Issues 299 — 2019 Virginia Tech, focuses on the role of ethics in innovation in the first article in this issue. AI, like other influential technologies, can be a force for innovation, and is known to have harmful as well as helpful implications. Johnson highlights the undeniable moment in which technologies are raising fundamental ethical questions about humanity, including how we want to inhabit the world that we are creating. With information at the core, he lays out opportunities and challenges for research libraries. Within the broad context of policy and principles, there is an opportunity for research libraries to make a difference today— explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). In the second article, Michael Ridley, Librarian Emeritus at University of Guelph, PhD candidate at Western University, and postgraduate affiliate at Vector Institute, defines XAI, and then situates it in the context of privacy, opacity, and trust. He advances our understanding of XAI by outlining strategies, techniques, and processes. He concludes by squarely putting the opportunity on research libraries “to shape the development, deployment, and use of intelligent systems in a manner consistent with the values of scholarship and librarianship” with XAI as one of the most important ways to do so. Geneva Henry, dean of Libraries and Academic Innovation at The George Washington University, ties it all together for us with an article on the role of the research library in formulating and implementing institutional policy based on the needs of the users, and in the context of public policy. Starting out with an assessment of national investments in AI, Henry emphasizes the role of policies that promote ethically responsible practice. Her article outlines ways in which research libraries are answering and could answer the key question posed by Brundage and Bryson: it “is not whether AI will be governed, but how it is currently being governed, and how that governance might become more informed, integrated, effective, and anticipatory.”28