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 just a web browser? Fortunately, I already had some … [Read more...] about Botsitting and Moral Disengagement
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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 dashboard? Have you considered turning … [Read more...] about We Thought This Transcriber Was a Bot
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 … [Read more...] about The AI Encyclical and the Question of Efficiency: When "Easier" isn't "Better"
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 has done the most on gathering and evaluating the … [Read more...] about Making AI Energy Use More Transparent
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 … [Read more...] about AI With Historical Instincts?