Many thanks Tom! And would love to hear your thoughts
Posts by Finola Finn
Many thanks to the editors of this timely special issue - Katie Mackinnon, Nanna Thylstrup, Tonia Sutherland, Caroline Bassett, Unso Jo, and Louis Ravn - for curating such an exciting mix of interdisciplinary perspectives on how AI-systems and archival practices are reshaping one another.
Co-authored with Donal Khosrowi, the contribution highlights the limitations of archival RAG-based LLM chatbots for providing answers to historical questions, demonstrating how such ‘instant histories’ skip vital steps of research processes and obscure the many complexities of archival collections.
Thrilled to see our article “AI assistants in the archive and the lure of ‘instant history’" out in Cambridge Forum on AI: Culture and Society!
It is open access and available here: doi.org/10.1017/cfc....
“We need to teach skepticism and critical thinking as philosophical responses to machine intelligence. Instead of just changing our assignments, we must do something more provocative and arguably far more challenging. We must reflect on how we think and find value in thinking.”
A page from the so-called Heidelberger Schicksalsbuch (UB Heidelberg Cod. Pal. germ. 832) showing clearly the traces an astrolabe left.
You see a page from the past with a lasting impression: this manuscript page from the 1490s is made of parchment, and an #astrolabe that was included into the binding of the manuscript left this shadow of the astronomical instrument behind.
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- Iqra Aslam, Rahul Nagshi, and Donal Khosrowi’s critical examination of Machine Unlearning
- Bonam Mingole et al.’s work on the value of democratising bias detection and critique of LLMs
A lot to take away! All full papers available here: www.aies-conference.com/2025/proceed...
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- Maria Eriksson et al.’s thorough and policy-focused review of current issues in AI benchmarking
- Hyo Jin Do and Werner Geyer’s recommendations for how best to present factuality estimates to users in AI-generated answers
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Among the many thought-provoking contributions, I was particularly struck by:
- Shreya Chappidi et al.’s “accountability capture”, a framework for understanding the under-considered effects of implementing algorithmic record-keeping on sociotechnical systems
The AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES25) was an enriching few days, providing a great forum for engaging with the latest research on the ethical challenges of AI. (1/4)
The whiteboards were full with opinions and experiences by the session’s end. Many thanks to the participants and my co-panellists Stefan Esselborn, @cgoetter.bsky.social, and @nescioquid.bsky.social
We explored such questions as: What new teaching and research methods are becoming possible? What skills should we teach students in the age of AI? What can History of Technology contribute to the discussion?
Very much enjoyed the lively discussions at our interactive roundtable ‘Artificial Intelligence in Teaching History of Technology’ at the SHOT 2025 Annual Meeting!
Un livre écrit par deux historien.nes, @ccarolinemuller.bsky.social et @artificialmemory.bsky.social , qui parlent d'une manière intelligente du numérique parce qu'ils le pratiquent depuis longtemps et qu'ils l'approchent comme un 'bête' sujet de sciences humaines
#paniquesmoralessabstenir
The submission deadline for #CHR2025 is fast approaching! Authors, you have until Friday, 18 July, to submit your short and long papers, lightning talk abstracts, and workshop ideas.
⚠️ Please note: there will be NO extension of this deadline.
🔗 2025.computational-humanities-research.org/cfp/
Promotional image. Text reads: The people's dispensary digitised archive
Check out #ThePeoplesDispensary – our free new online resource about charitable medicine in Edinburgh. It includes a fully transcribed and digitised archive of over 10,000 pages of Georgian patient case notes from the Edinburgh Public Dispensary
👉 www.rcpe.ac.uk/peoplesdispe...
Alongside the fairground rides, an additional highlight was presenting my research on uses of the soul-body relationship in 17thC accounts of melancholy in this gorgeous pub! A delightful juxtaposition. Many thanks to everyone who squeezed into the lounge room to hear our panel
What a brilliant conference! Feeling very lucky to have heard fascinating papers and met so many new faces within the atmospheric surrounds of the Black Country Living Museum! Inspired more than ever by the breadth and depth of social histories #SHSConf2025 @socialhistsoc.bsky.social
Such a great evening!
Highlights for me included @myra.bsky.social et al’s work on measuring and understanding public perceptions of AI through crowdsourced metaphors, and Prakhar Ganesh et al’s tutorial on the implications of multiplicity for fairness and explainability in algorithmic decision-making (plus much more!)
So glad to be at #FAccT25! Fantastic first day soaking up the latest cross-disciplinary research on fairness, accountability, and transparency in socio-technical systems
This Thursday, seminar online organised by the students of the Master in Digital and Public History at @uni.lu with @c2dh.uni.lu
Presentations by students from all around the world
www.uni.lu/c2dh-en/even... #PublicHistory #student #history
The video itself also seeks to challenge “the vastness of digital memory and its overwhelming flood of images” through the use of the oral traditions of poetry and song. More about these thought-provoking works here: www.uni.lu/life-en/even...
… reminding us that “the production chain of images is becoming an increasingly complex web of resource supply, energy consumption, and cutting-edge chip manufacturing” - shaped and driven by geopolitics, especially between China, the U.S, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
Such an engaging guided tour by the artist Daphné Le Sergent this afternoon of her exhibition ‘Silicon Islands and War’, hosted by @uni.lu as part of EMoP. Her video essay “invites us to explore an alternative history of photography in relation to the semiconductor industry” ->
Our full article on the CCC framework was published in AI & Ethics last year, and is available here:
doi.org/10.1007/s436...
We were excited to see many other teams also working to address the moral, legal and regulatory uncertainties that surround GenAI use – and it was fantastic to discuss these issues at such an interdisciplinary and vibrant event!
Our presentation outlined the Collective-Centered Creation framework (developed by Donal Khosrowi, Elinor Bell-Clark, and me), which provides an approach for tracking and assessing the significance of different contributions, by humans and machines, to the creation of GenAI images.
It was great to share our work on attributing credit and responsibility for generative AI outputs at the ‘Ethics and Aesthetics of Artificial Images’ conference at Venice International University last month ->