Early this month, my trusty development laptop broke. Thanks to shipping problems in Vietnam and severe weather in Kentucky, the replacement was delayed for ten days. I was stuck with the computer we use for videoconferences, without any of the tools we use for writing or testing software. How could I do my job with […]
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Recent Posts from FromThePage
An Interview with Kate Feighery of the Archdiocese of New York
Kate Feighery of the Archdiocese of New York kindly took the time to answer questions and discuss their projects and experience using the platform with Sara Brumfield of FromThePage. Kate Feighery is the Executive Director of Archives & Records Management of the Archdiocese of New York. Tell us about the records you’re working with and […]
We Thought This Transcriber Was a Bot
An institution recently emailed and asked: “Are you doing some AI experiment on my collection without telling me? I see this one transcriber who really feels like they are using AI.” I started typing a standard response: Of course we’re not testing AI on your collection without telling you. Have you checked the suspicious behaviors […]
The AI Encyclical and the Question of Efficiency: When "Easier" isn't "Better"
Last week, I was corresponding with my friend Laura Morreale about the results of Gemini transcription on this Crusader-era manuscript. The differences between the AI results and Laura’s are fairly interesting: there are some mis-readings, like y for ii, but about half of the differences are reasonable editorial decisions. Gemini represents long s as the character ſ and retains the abbreviation of […]
Making AI Energy Use More Transparent
We recently hosted a webinar by our friend Jon Ippolito from the University of Maine's New Media program. We'd been looking for resources on how to evaluate and judge energy usage by LLMs since last summer's SAA panel questions started with a pointed "question" on the ethical use of AI, given the energy consumption. Jon […]
AI With Historical Instincts?
Ben recently made the following observations on BlueSky, and we thought they were interesting enough to share with all of you: I stumbled across something interesting during a live demo in yesterday's webinar. Not having anything prepared, I tried a page in the Queens University Archives' Riel Resistance Collection. The hand was extraordinarily difficult for me, even though […]