This is the death of history. To kill the archives is to kill history. NARA employees pushed back which is great but their resistance is limited. Is there anything we can do as historians? Write a letter opposing this? Boycott the archives until ai is removed? @ahahistorians.bsky.social
New: The National Archives is pushing Google Gemini AI on workers despite concerns from archivists about accuracy of the historical record. Internal presentation shows the "AI-Mazing Techventure" they are embarking on www.404media.co/ai-mazing-te...
The National Archives is launching a public-facing AI chatbot called "Archie." Employees have concerns.
Fuck AI completely into the ground.
I'm a data and research librarian who has created 3 archival collections, and also an anarchist. I'm inclined to think that because of the vast destructiveness of our society, we should accept that most of our history will be destroyed along with it. Some sources will survive as they always do.
Is there a history bluesky thingy? I think @rauchway.bsky.social did something or something regarding a thread of historians? Anyway, this feels like an existential threat to history and feels like we should organize against it.
I am not a historian, but have often thought that historians in the future are screwed thanks to destroying the internet and AI and such.
Heart breaking. I rely on the original images of deck logs for my research. A summary will miss so much detail.
Corrupting search, firing humans, belching CO2 into the atmosphere. Inexcusable.
It seems bizarre to me that NARA would invest in more unreliable tech solutions when their new online catalogue continues to be such a disaster. Baffling.
I am an archivist & have mixed feelings. NARA is probably swamped by requesters asking vague, naive questions like, "I want all the law cases about people whose landlord lets chemical fumes get into their apartment". A generative text system won't solve that but might be able to do a first pass.
Who’s version of history will be left, met a woman historian on here who used wills to recreate women’s lives and history, for the periods when only men counted