Artificial intelligence and the humanities

Selected recent publications about the implications of artificial intelligence for the humanities and librarianship:

Anna Mills and Lauren M. E. Goodlad, CRITICAL AI: Adapting College Writing for the Age of Large Language Models such as ChatGPT: Some Next Steps for Educators (Critical AI, January 17, 2023)

• Includes recommended practices for educators, "to protect academic integrity and student learning".

Lauren M. E. Goodlad & Samuel Baker, Now the Humanities Can Disrupt “AI” (Public Books, February 20, 2023)

• Discusses what AI really is and what humanists can offer
• Presents implications for student learning, especially writing

Ruth Pickering and Matthew Ismail , eds., Artificial Intelligence in Libraries and Publishing (Charleston Briefings: Trending Topics for Information Professionals, Michigan Publishing Services, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12669942)

• "What is the current state of artificial intelligence (AI) in the world of scholarly communication? What impact does AI have on the practices and strategies of publishers, libraries, information technology companies, and researchers? What exactly is AI and what are those in the realm of scholarly communication actually thinking about it and doing with it? This Charleston Briefing seeks to provide some answers to these very important questions, offering both general essays on AI and more specific essays on AI in scholarly publishing, academic libraries, and AI in information discovery and knowledge building. The essays will help publishers, librarians, and researchers better understand the actual impact of AI on libraries and publishing so that they can respond to the potentially transformative impact of AI in a measured and knowledgeable manner."

AI and humanities: new intelligence with attention to detail (University of Amsterdam)

• "Algorithms play an increasingly important role in our lives. How should we deal with this? According to Tobias Blanke (University Professor of Humanities and AI), humanities researchers are indispensable for exploring the ethical and social side of AI. ‘We need knowledge of cultural concepts in order to be able to correct errors in algorithms.’"

Moira Donovan, How AI is helping historians better understand our past (MIT Technology Review, April 11, 2023)

• The historians of tomorrow are using computer science to analyze how people lived centuries ago.

Richard de Grijs,  Guest Post — Artificial Intelligence Not Yet Intelligent Enough to be a Trusted Research Aid (The Scholarly Kitchen, April 27, 2023)

• de Grijs writes about his experience doing historical research with ChatGBT.

AI and Pedagogy Workshops at Stanford University (Digital Humanities @ Stanford)

• Laura Wittman and Quinn Dombrowski offered 3 workshops on AI and pedagogy; the workshops are summarized and the slides are available.

Chatbots are supercharging search: Are we ready? (Is that a Fact podcast)

• In this episode of the podcast of the News Literacy Project, host Darragh Worland and guest Will Knight (senior writer about artificial intelligence at WIRED magazine) discuss "how ChatGPT is being applied to search and what some of the potential and pitfalls are of this new class of technology known as “generative AI.”"

Barbara Fister and Alison J. Head, Getting a grip on ChatGPT (Inside Higher Ed, May 4, 2023)

• Considering what academia got wrong about Wikipedia helps to crystallize the questions we should be asking about ChatGPT and our knowledge environments, Barbara Fister and Alison J. Head write.