Artificial Historians

“Marnie Hughes-Warrington’s Artificial Historians is a groundbreaking book on likely the most important topic facing historians today. Hughes-Warrington brings the reader into the rapidly developing world of artificial intelligence with care and skill […providing] a powerful and persuasive diagnosis of how current trends in AI push historians toward becoming passive receptors and [arguing] that the real danger of the current AI moment is our own abdication of responsibility. Hughes-Warrington demonstrates that this does not need to be our fate. For the engaged historian there are multiple ways history can be made, which also means there are multiple ways for history to take up ethical and political action in the future.”

Ethan Kleinberg, Wesleyan University, USA

“Marnie Hughes-Warrington's book continues her ongoing, thought-provoking explorations into what makes us historical beings. Blending philosophy, historiography, and computer science in a highly readable meditation on artificial intelligence’s understanding of the past, she asks whether and how machines can be as effective makers of histories as humans, and offers some surprising answers.”

Daniel Woolf, Queen’s University, Canada

“Artificial Historians challenges us to think differently about the potential for AI-generated histories. What is the difference between those we humans write and those generated by machines? Marnie Hughes-Warrington offers a clear argument about their similar logics, but also a reminder that algorithms are human creations and thus amenable to our management and direction. Anyone concerned about the future of history-writing in the age of electronic knowledge production will need to grapple with the practical and ethical issues this book addresses.”

Joan W. Scott, Institute for Advanced Study, USA

“The enchanting, passionate storytelling in this volume shows the way to what Hughes-Warrington calls the “entanglement” of humans and computers. This is a powerful volume about the open-endedness of history, and about the role that historians should have in designing AI if we are to live with machines that recognize the open-endedness of our destiny as a species.”

Jo Guldi, Emory University, USA

A fascinating exploration of the logics that constitute, and that are at work in, artificial and human history-making, that contributes to the twin tasks of making history and AI better through sustained, disciplined enquiry into the nature of both. […] The result is a highly illuminating and original rebooting of our thinking about the defining features of conventional human-, and emerging and established machine-histories. […] The book is […] remarkable for its freshness and accessibility, and for the spirit of open enquiry and intellectual excitement and curiosity that it conveys.

Arthur Chapman, Institute of Education, University College London, UK