The history we have inevitably passes through bottlenecks. Much is left out, edited away, embellished.
We have no idea what happened over 500 years ago, but the idea of a brilliant scholar translating the Greek texts on behalf of the Medicis, shouldn't simply be accepted as stated. If you are running the world (like the Medicis did) history would be a lever of control. It seems inevitable that the stories should be directed (carefully) towards whatever ends.
History is actually a present day activity - it provides the backdrop to the present. Altering that backdrop has present value.
I can't see how ai will help us the endeavour of trying to get a better handle on what happened in the past. I do see how it would provide modern-day Medicis a way to change the backdrop more quickly.
Paleography, transcription, and translation are hellishly difficult to learn and really make it difficult for interested people to explore the archive. LLMs have become pretty darn good at doing this out of the box. Prior to this you needed specially trained ML models and before that there was no automation whatsoever.
I can't find any big AI model which can read historical Kurrent-family handwriting well out of the box. You still need specially trained models (i.e. transkribus) which generalize terribly.
Transkribus is definitely still the best option in some cases. But there are a bunch of cases where it was necessary two years ago and isn't necessary anymore, which is pretty remarkable.
> I can't see how ai will help us the endeavour of trying to get a better handle on what happened in the past.
Well, AI democratizes the power of translation (and interrogating texts). Before only a few specialists could go directly to the source. Now anyone can try to make sense of it.
We don't get to the source. Have you ever personally seen any historical sources? Eg the sources for classical writings or the Bible? At best you get high resolution imagery provided by suspicious folks such as RB Toth.
If the source is corrupt - as I suggest and as is possible because the Medicis provided/sanctioned their version - all you have is interpretation based on flawed data. Endless production of information (by ai) based on flawed sources (this is our history) only serves to increase the haystack rather than helping you to converge on truth.
We have no idea what happened over 500 years ago, but the idea of a brilliant scholar translating the Greek texts on behalf of the Medicis, shouldn't simply be accepted as stated. If you are running the world (like the Medicis did) history would be a lever of control. It seems inevitable that the stories should be directed (carefully) towards whatever ends.
History is actually a present day activity - it provides the backdrop to the present. Altering that backdrop has present value.
I can't see how ai will help us the endeavour of trying to get a better handle on what happened in the past. I do see how it would provide modern-day Medicis a way to change the backdrop more quickly.