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<\/a>Illustration by Rahma Abdelrahman, Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n
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1. AI can tell us WHAT happened but not WHY (or, importantly, why it matters)<\/strong><\/p>\n History is not about knowing when the Crimean War happened, or who was Prime Minister in 1957. Although knowing these types of \u2018facts\u2019 is certainly useful, this is the sort of information that anyone can look up in books, or more likely, online. It has been the case for many years that this sort of information has been readily available in Wikipedia. Every historian I know (myself included) has used Wikipedia to double check this sort of information (was the Cuban missile crisis in October or November 1962?). But the existence of all of this information \u2013 these \u2018facts\u2019 about the past \u2013 have not made historians redundant.<\/p>\n Image by Kelly Lawless, Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n Because knowing these details is not what history is about. We are not writing lists of \u2018things that happened\u2019, but putting together these things to examine WHY they happened and, more tricky still, why they happened in this particular way. Why did a political leader make this particular decision? What were the circumstances that made that the best possible option? Or why did people living through a particular period of time behave in the way that they did?<\/p>\n And, importantly, how did this wide range of human decisions, actions, and behaviours, create the world that we live in?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 2. AI will tell you whatever you want to believe<\/strong><\/p>\n Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are designed to use their vast databases of writing to predict what would be the most likely<\/em> answer to your question. They are NOT designed to question the prompt you have given them, or to tell you that you\u2019ve asked the wrong question.<\/p>\n Historians are notorious for responding to a question by critiquing the question. One of the key skills that historians are taught to develop is their critical thinking. This applies not just to interpreting the past, but also to the way that history is used and understood in the present. We train undergraduates to engage critically with the questions that they ask. To pose useful, interesting, and meaningful questions. To ask questions that can be answered with available material to provide insight into the past.<\/p>\n In order to be able to ask these type of questions you need a certain amount of knowledge and understanding.<\/p>\n Historians are constantly critiquing and changing the question.<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n 3. AI uses existing data and information \u2013 this information is not \u2018neutral\u2019 or complete<\/strong><\/p>\n Discussions of AI often talk about the \u2018vast corpus of human knowledge\u2019 that LLMs draw on. While this is true, this \u2018vast corpus\u2019 is in no way ALL of human knowledge. There have been drives in the last two decades or so to digitise a lot of historic material, but digitising archives is far from complete and has not been done in a systematic and neutral way. The high cost of digitisation \u2013 in equipment, human labour and storage \u2013 has meant that decisions have been made about what to digitise and what not to (or at least, in what order to digitise things). Decisions about what is most important, valuable or necessary are based on lots of factors. All of these decisions together have not resulted in digitised historical archives that accurately and neutrally represent the views of all humans in the past. Archives themselves don\u2019t contain everyone\u2019s views or perspectives \u2013 it has been estimated that only 2% of material created by humans makes it into archives.<\/p>\n Only 2% of material created by humans has been archived, let alone digitised.<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n So, for lots of reasons the \u2018vast human knowledge\u2019 of the past that LLMs rely on is incomplete and over-represents the points of view of some people while others are almost entirely absent.<\/p>\n It is also important to recognise that none of the online systems that we use \u2013 from google, to Wikipedia, to all social media platforms \u2013 are neutral. They all use algorithms to sift information and present what they think is the best result (the one we most likely want to see). This is generally a good thing – when searching for a hairdresser I do want to see the ones close to me, not the ones in Timbuktu \u2013 but it is crucial that we all understand how his can impact on the information that we see.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 4. History is also about finding new voices and poi<\/strong>nts of view<\/strong><\/p>\n Historians are constantly involved in re-thinking, re-evaluating and re-examining the past. We are always looking for new perspectives, new ways of understanding and<\/p>\n<\/a>
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