Workshop 2: Eun Seo Jo, ‘Digital Archives at the Intersection of New Archival History and AI’

Eun Seo Jo (Stanford University) presented her paper ‘Digital Archives at the Intersection of New Archival History and AI‘ at the second AEOLIAN workshop ‘Reimagining Industry / Academic / Cultural Heritage Partnerships in AI’ on Tuesday 26th October 2021.

Abstract: Digitization of historical archives in troves has ushered in a new era of data science in history, changing the scholarship and preservation of the past. But more pressingly, digitized archives have also revolutionized developments in commercial technology by feeding the training models that we interact with everyday. In this talk, I explore the consequences of and paths imagined by digital historical materials both in historical research and in tech deployment and the new interconnections forged among archives, data science, and AI. In doing so, I introduce a perspective of History, called New Archival History, a paradigm of historical thinking situating History in the broader context of data science. I also discuss the urgency for wide collaboration among historians, archivists, librarians, and technologists for a more informed, effective, and harmless production of knowledge and technology.