"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player Analysis

Hardcore AI for History with Mark Humphries, Professor of History at Wilfred Laurier University

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Oct 31, 2023

Mark Humphries, a Professor of History at Wilfrid Laurier University, is pushing the boundaries of AI in historical research. He shares how tools like ChatGPT are transforming how historians approach archival research, moving away from traditional methods. Mark discusses his successes and failures in fine-tuning AI for historical documentation. He provides insight into ethical considerations and the impact of AI on education and societal structures, emphasizing the need for historians to adapt to these rapid technological advancements.

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ANECDOTE

Early AI Interests

Mark Humphreys' early interest in programming led him to create a computer game and websites.
His first foray into machine learning involved translating German World War I histories using OCR software.

INSIGHT

AI in History Before LLMs

Early machine learning in history focused on optical character recognition (OCR) to digitize text.
Historians then explored data visualization, like word clouds, but found it less effective for in-depth analysis.

ANECDOTE

Transcribus and ChatGPT Synergy

Transcribus, an AI-powered transcription program, effectively transcribes handwritten historical documents.
Combining Transcribus with ChatGPT significantly improved accuracy, paving the way for processing vast undigitized archives.

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Mark Humphries is a Professor of History at Wilfrid Laurier University, where he has published widely on various aspects of Canadian history. We invited Mark to do an episode after he reached out to tell us that hearing about how Nathan fine-tuned GPT-3.5 on GPT-4 reasoning helped him get over some hurdles in his own archival research. In addition, he chats about all the things that he'd tried that hadn't worked, and in the process proved himself to be one of the world's leading adopters of AI technology in the field of history.

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TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00:00) - Episode Preview

(00:03:00) - The state of AI in history before recent advances like GPT-3

(00:06:00) - Mark's background and how he first got interested in AI

(00:09:00) - Using AI to process and search through vast amounts of archival material

(00:12:00) - The challenges of digitizing and searching handwritten historical documents

(00:15:00) - The massive scale of undiscovered archival material that could be processed by AI

(00:18:00) - How AI can help historians process more archival material than ever before

(00:20:11) - Sponsors: Netsuite | Omneky

(00:21:00) - Limitations on using commercial APIs for private archival documents

(00:24:00) - The cost of processing archival documents compared to hiring human transcribers

(00:27:00) - Comparing GPT's ability to transcribe historical handwriting vs more recent scripts

(00:33:00) - Tracing individuals through complex fur trade records using AI

(00:36:00) - Mark's approach to fine-tuning models for specific historical tasks

(00:39:00) - Challenges teaching AI models the nuances of historical writing

(00:42:00) - Privacy issues limiting the use of commercial APIs on restricted archival material

(00:45:00) - The gap between people's expectations of AI and what it can really do right now

(00:51:00) - Adapting assignments and student expectations to AI's current capabilities

(00:52:28) - Using chain of thought prompting to teach models precise historical tasks

(00:52:46) - Getting high accuracy on keyword tagging of archival documents using fine-tuning

(00:57:00) - Mark has crossed the threshold from promise to accelerating archival research

(01:00:00) - How to frame classification tasks to get the most value from AI models

(01:03:00) - Teaching AI models to pronounce tricky historical names and terms

(01:06:19) - Mark's experience using AI in the classroom over two semesters

(01:09:00) - Assignments that are better suited to the current strengths and weaknesses of AI

(01:11:45) - AI progress in education is lagging due to lack of institutional adoption

(01:12:00) - The trajectory of AI capabilities and the need for humans to exceed the model baseline

(01:27:49) - Lessons from history on economic transitions and the social contract

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