Large Language Models
if museums of the future
scamper pixels and tokens
of probabilistic revisionist histories

I’d put the Neanderthal individual
next to the Moai statue
it’s probable, it’s been repeatedly seen: in a movie;

it serves by purpose now
it divorces oral text from scribed tale
hacked for the heck of it

covertly hoping
for the best placements
not to ruffle feathers

its totalitarian cleansed history
satisfies enforced-majorities
and yet disturbs

the forgotten memory
of the discomforting
perceived-few

                  —animasuri ‘24

—-•
triggers

Atleson, M. (2023, Feb 27). Keep your AI claims in check. Blog: Federal Trade Commission (FTC). https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2023/02/keep-your-ai-claims-check

Banner, J. M. Jr. (2021). The Ever-Changing Past: Why All History Is Revisionist History. Yale University Press.

Banner, J. M. jr. (2022). All History Is Revisionist History.  Ever since Thucydides dismissed Herodotus, historians have differed about the past. IN: Humanities. The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Summer 2022 issue. Online: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). https://www.neh.gov/article/all-history-revisionist-history

Bassett, C. (2019). The computational therapeutic: exploring Weizenbaum’s ELIZA as a history of the present. IN: AI & Soc 34, 803–812 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-018-0825-9

Berghel, H. (2024). Generative Artificial Intelligence, Semantic Entropy, and the Big Sort. IN: Computer, vol. 57, no. 01, pp. 130-135, 2024. https://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2023.3331594

Donovan, M. (2023, April 11). How AI is helping historians better understand our past. The historians of tomorrow are using computer science to analyze how people lived centuries ago. IN: MIT Technology Review. Online: Artficial Intelligence. https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/04/11/1071104/ai-helping-historians-analyze-past/amp/

Edwards, B. (2024, Feb 23 ). Google’s hidden AI diversity prompts lead to outcry over historically inaccurate images. Inserting depictions of diversity into AI images creates revisionist history, critics say. Online: Ars Technica. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/02/googles-hidden-ai-diversity-prompts-lead-to-outcry-over-historically-inaccurate-images/

Passenger Wieck, L. (2023, Aug 15). Revising Historical Writing Using Generative AI. An Editorial Experiment. Online: Perspectives on History. The Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association. https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/perspectives-on-history/summer-2023/revising-historical-writing-using-generative-ai-an-editorial-experiment

Stoked-Walker, C. (2024, Feb 21). Google’s Gemini AI was mocked for its revisionist history, but it still highlights a real problem. Online: Fast Company. https://www.fastcompany.com/91034044/googles-gemini-ai-was-mocked-for-its-revisionist-history-but-it-still-highlights-a-real-problem