Artificial Historians

This book offers readers an introduction to the world of artificial histories and historians. It looks behind the interfaces of AI and explores everyday platforms and prize-winning history books to identify how people and algorithms make histories and how they might make histories in the future.

Every moment around the globe, histories are made about ordinary people who use digital devices. These histories are not made by professional historians or even by humans but by artificial intelligence that scours our digital footprints for patterns. AI histories not only shape recommendations about what we might buy or stream but also our access to education, healthcare, and justice. The outcomes of recommendation systems are not just a technology problem or an ethics problem. This book argues that this is also a history problem, and it needs to be understood as one if we are to make fairer or more just systems. It shows us that the deep history of history making--including Australian Aboriginal and First Nations histories--can help us to navigate the future of history in AI.

Presenting readers with a range of familiar and accessible examples, Artificial Historians is a valuable resource for students, scholars, and all those interested in global historiography, technology, and artificial intelligence.

Marnie Hughes-Warrington is Distinguished Professor of History at Adelaide University. She is the author of many historiography texts, including Fifty Key Thinkers on History (2014), History Goes to the Movies (2007), Big and Little Histories (with Anne Martin, 2022), and History from Loss (with Daniel Woolf, 2023).

Aunty Anne Martin is Director of the Tjabal Indigenous Higher Education Centre at the Australian National University, Australia. She is co-author of Big and Little Histories (2022, with Marnie Hughes-Warrington) and is an Aboriginal rights activities and educator who is dedicated to changing the future for our next generation of leaders.

Uncle Lewis Yarlupurka O’Brien is Senior Elder, educator, adviser of the Kaurna People of the Adelaide Plains, Australia and is recognised as a leader of reconciliation. He is a writer and speaker of the Kaurna language and has played a critical role in its recognition and growth. He is the author of And the Clock Struck Thirteen (2007), a memoir as told to Mary-Anne Gale.