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AI makes the humanities more important, but also a lot weirder
Historians are finally having their AI debate
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Benjamin Breen
13
When Jorge Luis Borges met one of the founders of AI
One reason I became a historian is the joy of encountering moments in the past that are foreign, yet also oddly familiar.
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Benjamin Breen
AI legibility, physical archives, and the future of research
A followup to "The leading AI models are now good historians"
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Benjamin Breen
12
The familiar loneliness of the Kinetoscope
One other way that the 2020s resemble the 1890s
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Benjamin Breen
1
The leading AI models are now good historians
... in specific domains. Three case studies with GPT-4o, o1, and Claude Sonnet 3.5, and what they mean
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Benjamin Breen
33
Post-postal
What did we lose when we stopped writing letters?
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Benjamin Breen
3
LLM-based educational games will be a big deal
For the first time, digital games can make qualitative assessments of learning. Here's what that might look like.
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Benjamin Breen
2
"He spoke of computers with some awe"
Margaret Mead, John von Neumann, and the prehistory of AI
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Benjamin Breen
6
Role-playing with AI will be a powerful tool for writers and educators
Or, how well can GPT-4 simulate an acid trip in 1963?
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Benjamin Breen
3
Simulating an LSD trip in 1963 with GPT-4
The question: how well can GPT-4 simulate a trip on LSD, specifically one in early 1960s Los Angeles? The answer… pretty damn well. Read on for the…
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Benjamin Breen
When technology follows art
From optics to machine learning, artists have played an important, if underrated, role in the history of technology
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Benjamin Breen
10
Margaret Mead, Technocracy, and the origins of AI's ideological divide
The anthropologist helped popularize both techno-optimism and the concept of existential risk
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Benjamin Breen
3
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