Chatting with the Past

Geschichte ist Gegenwart! Der History & Politics Podcast der Körber-Stiftung

Imagine it is 2023 and you can chat with all the historical figures you have always wanted to talk to. Unfortunately, you can't do this yet, but you can engage with chatbots that claim to be able to imitate historical figures. Artificial intelligence promises to interact with the past in unprecedented interactivity. As AI continuously develops, educationalists warn that pupils and students already use tools such as ChatGPT on a daily basis. In our August episode, we explore with our guest Frédéric Clavert, Assistant Professor in European Contemporary History at the University of Luxembourg, the possibilities and challenges we encounter, when dealing with the past by using 'large language model' tools such as Chat GPT.

Information about our guest

About Frédéric Clavert

Frédéric Clavert among the guests of ChatGPT, A.I. & History: A Round Table Discussion, organized by The History Communication Institute and the Explorers of the International Federation for Public History, February 2023.

More information on the use of ChatGPT in history education Moira Donovan, How AI is helping historians better understand our past, in: MIT Technology Review, April 11, 2023.

Ludwig Siegele / Oliver Morton, How AI could change computing, culture and the course of history, in: The Economist, April 20, 2023

History Communication Institute, A Statement on Artificial Intelligence, June 2023.

Wulf Kannsteiner, Digital Doping for Historians: Can History, Memory and Historical Theory be Rendered Artificially Intelligent?, in: History and Theory 61 (2023), No. 4, p. 119-133.

Christian Götter, ‘Künstliche Intelligenz’ schreibt künstliche Geschichte, in: Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht Nr. 5-6 (2023).

Glossary

ChatGPT: ChatGPT, in full Chat Generative Pre-training Transformer, software that allows a user to ask it questions using conversational, or natural, language. (Source: https://www.britannica.com/)

Large language model: A large language model (LLM) is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm that uses deep learning techniques and massively large data sets to understand, summarize, generate and predict new content. (Source: https://www.techtarget.com/)

Generative artificial intelligence: Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence technology that can produce various types of content, including text, imagery, audio and synthetic data. (Source: https://www.techtarget.com/)

Artificial intelligence: artificial intelligence (AI), the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. (Source: https://www.britannica.com/)

Machine learning: machine learning, in artificial intelligence (a subject within computer science), discipline concerned with the implementation of computer software that can learn autonomously. (Source: https://www.britannica.com/)

Cybernetics: cybernetics, control theory as it is applied to complex systems. Cybernetics is associated with models in which a monitor compares what is happening to a system at various sampling times with some standard of what should be happening, and a controller adjusts the system’s behaviour accordingly. (Source: https://www.britannica.com/)

Data mining: data mining, also called knowledge discovery in databases, in computer science, the process of discovering interesting and useful patterns and relationships in large volumes of data. The field combines tools from statistics and artificial intelligence (such as neural networks and machine learning) with database management to analyze large digital collections, known as data sets. (Source: https://www.britannica.com/)

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