Artificial intelligence tools for historians

Historical research may seem to be a field in which AI tools will be especially useful. Historians are often confronted with very large unstructured digital collections of documents, letters, images, treaties, legal settlements, contracts, and diplomatic exchanges that far exceed the ability of a single human researcher to sift and analyze for valuable historical insights. …

A conversation with Gemini about Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier

In previous posts I've been fairly skeptical about the value of ChatGPT as a research tool (link). In recent weeks I've been exploring Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash and Gemini Deep Research, and I'm cautiously more impressed. There are two core shortcomings of an AI tool based solely on large language models and massive training: lack …