Accuracy is everything, and the way information in the archive is presented to visitors/researchers is paramount. Anything that moves that discussion around that presentation away from human beings into the realm of artificially generated pablum is going to be met with resistance.
Think of it like how /r/askhistorians on Reddit would rather let a question go unanswered for hours so a professional can provide a proper, sourced answer, than let some random user chime in with anything. That's putting an emphasis on accuracy and providing a completeness, rather than a rapid one.
>At the current rate, it will take until 2046 to completely transcribe this series with just humans!,” Lagundo’s presentation says. She said that an AI transcript of the dataset was 90 percent correct and that it intends to share these transcripts with the public in its official catalog in November or December.
What's the rush? Why would we settle on 90% accuracy today when we could do it right and get 100%? It's not like this is mission critical information. It's an archive. Take the time and do it right.
Moreover, why is this so important that we need to burn the energy from AI to do it?
Because someone will get a promotion for leading an "initiative".
So they disclose that ArchieAI might repeat factual errors in the records, but don't bother mentioning that ArchieAI might make up fictional history?
Draw your own conclusions about the professionalism and goals of management, emboldened and empowered by "scale" ..
As a counterpoint however.. vast and rapidly expanding knowledgebase is a unique and pressing concern of the modern age. Even world-class, PhD laden and disciplined groups are not keeping up with ingestion and use of the amounts of data emerging. The cure adds to the ailment here, though.. AI itself in current incarnations produces mountains of gibberish or worse, half-truths and half- very plausible and confident nonsense.. This is an important story.
> “I have a serious problem with the ‘expert archivist’ title,” another employee said.
> “Same here. If we have a disclaimer saying the generative AI can make things up and yet call it an expert archivist on the same tier as actual human experts…,” another chimed in.
You know, it's possible to write an article and filter out the useless complaints instead of throwing anything that supports your point at it. It's a system prompt for heaven's sake.
It's not terrible, but over half of the article being employees complaining about it is certainly a choice.
I'm reading a book by a papyrus expert (Stolen Fragments) and I was surprised by how they frame it as safeguarding history first, and the community accepting or rejecting lines of work based on that. If you're an archivist you are aware that AI is part of the future, but also you're planning to still be an archivist at the institution and want to shape what that looks like.
And that is a very valid concern. One of the chief issues with all of these chat bots is that they speak like humans with unearned authority. The output is presented with an air of knowledge that it simply does not have because it can't truly "know" anything.
Which just demonstrates the complete lack of respect for the domain they are trampling on.
We're talking about actual experts vs some bullshit AI salesman who probably don't know jack shit about the actual job of archiving.
> It's a system prompt for heaven's sake.
That's the whole point, they're archivists not some self proclaimed "pRoMpT EnGiNeErS" tech bros