I tend to call GPT-generated text “lardy” – too many words without a lot of meaning. GPT is in desperate need of a copy editor. For writing summarizations that might be used in a finding aid, this is NOT what you want. You want to capture the essence of a document or file in as concise a way as possible. Chain of Density Summarization, outlined in this paper, seems to be a way … [Read more...] about Could Chain of Density Prompts be Used for Finding Aids?
How Good Is Good Enough? Reviewing Transcriptions.
How good is good enough for your transcription project? We all have a tendency to want things to be “perfect”. Some of us even have a legal obligation for things to be “good”. But humans aren’t perfect. We’ve talked about the errors medieval scribes made transcribing – and they were professionals! Humans today also make mistakes. So, how much effort do you put into finding and … [Read more...] about How Good Is Good Enough? Reviewing Transcriptions.
Using GPT in an Archival Context: Matt Miller’s Susan B. Anthony Papers
Have you seen Matt Miller’s experiments using the GPT APIs on the Library of Congress’ Susan B. Anthony Papers? If you want to understand the possibilities of AI for archives, this is a great place to start. You can read Matt’s write-up and explore his interface to the collection. He’s using the GPT APIs to achieve a lot: … [Read more...] about Using GPT in an Archival Context: Matt Miller’s Susan B. Anthony Papers
Advice from Archives for Black Lives
How do you handle racist language in your archives? This is, unfortunately, a perennial issue. The Archives for Black Lives group in 2019 published Anti-Racist Description Resources. While you should read the whole thing (especially if you have materials pertaining to slavery), I wanted to pull out some practical bits to share with you: Consider your audience and the … [Read more...] about Advice from Archives for Black Lives
ChatGPT, r/AskHistorians, & Spam
Vice recently published an article about ChatGPT generated spam on the popular AskHistorians subreddit. Here’s an excerpt: "The two-million-strong AskHistorians forum allows non-expert Redditors to submit questions about history topics, and receive in-depth answers from historians. Recent popular posts have probed the hive mind on whether the stress of being “on time” … [Read more...] about ChatGPT, r/AskHistorians, & Spam