AI: possibilites for the humanities?

During the past two years there have been a virtual explosion on the talk of AI. As much often is the case the research community is divided into those who believe that this will transform our live (so called techno-optimists), and those who calls for a slower process (so called techno-pessimist). Growing up in the 1990's I can see where the techno-pessimist are coming from, since popular culture are filled with AI:s that have grown out of control. The very classic action movies in the terminator saga tells the story of a weaponised AI that turned against humanity, and thus nearly extinguished human life through nuclears arms. Similar notions are based on the contemporary "The creator" in which humanity fights against an AI accused of nuking los angeles, which in the tend shows the be the result (spoiler) of human error, rather than the AI:s own choices.

The plot-twist of The Creator and Terminator saga illustrates an often forgetten point in the debate, namely the defintion of Generative Artifical Intelligence (GAI) and artifical generative intelligence AGI. These forms of artifical intelligence differs greatly since GAI is dependent on human prompts and is unable to make choises of it's own, whilst AGI have another form of intelligence which can operate outside of the human-computer interaction. The AI we are currently seeing in the forms of ChatGPT and so forth are GAI, which hence are not able to drawn it's own conclusions. Therefore, it is rather impossible for this machine to actually be threat towards humanity on it's own but in the wrong hands it can be used to gain knowledge that is not avaible to the common citizen. 

This does however not mean that AI will not have a significant outcome for the humanities and that it still poses important questions on how the humanities will both work with AI and how this work will change our current approach to creating new knowledge. Since I am very interested in new technologies I have utilized AI quite a lot recently and also been dabbling with some basic coding. In my own work AI have become an intellectual sparring partner, and it's is also interesting that I interact with it as I would with a human assistant. For instance I often asks AI to read through text and give me feedback on grammatical error or an appraisal of the text as a whole. This is basically something that can be done in word, but with the help of AI it becomes much more clear what to change and what to be left in the text. One example of this is the following asking for language feedback:

From this excerpt it is clear that chatGPT can be used as a way to proofread texts. This is something that have becoming for me, since I've previously spent a large amount of time proofreading texts. In this regard I do not fully utilize AI as once something is proof-read by it, it is fully done. Instead I also proofread it a couple of times in order to make sure that langauge is working. 

This might be one of the most important part of chatGPT since it also comes with some limitations. In my work I have often come across an important historical actor, namely the physician and professor Johan Ribbing. When I ask chatGPT about him the following description is presented:


Alright ChatGPT, so for you seem quite smart but you can't beat a living scholar. If we go to old lexicons, Johan Ribbing was in his lifetime also known for his conservative stance on sex, in which men of the working class became portrayed as raw brutes. So I simply took the next scholarly step and asked chatGPT for it's references:

This answer is from a scholarly view rather dubitious, since it actually refuse to give me the references when asked. I also tried to ask it about key scholarly work done on this individual, and all it came up with was that there was a limited range of sources on the subject. So was does all of this mean?

chatGPT comes in handy when asked to proofread text. When it does not fully know facts it however becomes rather unwilling to answer my questions. Furthermore, it becomes rather clear that chatGPT is limited to only online texts (otherwise would be weird) and hence it can not answer more specific questions. Therefore, whilst chatGPT might be of use to scholars with both proofreading and highlighting aspects of text, it can not fully replace a human. Still, it marvelous to see the progress made in the field of AI and I can't wait for what happens next. 



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