Artificial Intelligence and the Practice of History
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5740233 |
|---|---|
| Authors | R Darrell Meadows (0000-0001-8668-6151, independent scholar, corresponding author), Joshua Sternfeld (independent scholar) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 128 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 1345-1349 |
| Publication date | 2023-09-26 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The American Historical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-8762 • E-ISSN: 1937-5239 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ahr/rhad362 |
| OpenAlex | W4387078496 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
This AHR History Lab forum brings together scholars and practitioners from within and outside the historical discipline to consider the methodological and epistemological implications of artificial intelligence (AI) on historical practice. It is our hope that the following short essays will be the first of many such conversations on this immense topic in these pages. In conceiving of this interdisciplinary forum, our goal was less to provide an introductory primer on artificial intelligence for historians than to allow the participants ample room to interpret what they consider the relevant issues connecting artificial intelligence with history. In a world increasingly driven by algorithms, historians must adapt to the exponential production of digitized and born-digital evidence. Artificial intelligence has already proven capable in discovering patterns and identifying topics within large visual and textual datasets. Think, for example, of applying algorithms to search and discover correspondence within a vast trove of email messages, or to discover maps, comics, editorial cartoons, and advertisements within digitized historic newspapers.1 Current research on artificial intelligence, including work undertaken by several of our participants, has also demonstrated how artificial intelligence reproduces and magnifies racial and gender bias, and other, potentially unknowable, forms of bias. As more historical resources occupy digital formats, whether through digitizing processes or through born-digital means, machine-learning algorithms will become a necessary tool for conducting historical research. Artificial intelligence, in other words, influences both social activity as well as the work of doing history, and in so doing merges with historical consciousness. To ponder the effects of artificial intelligence on the field of history quite often requires interrogating fundamental concepts such as truth, evidence, and authenticity.
Chief executive officer · Commission · Endowment · Library science · Management · National archives · Officer · Political science · Computational and Text Analysis Methods · Computer Science · History · Law · Public Administration
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |