Sails Lunch Time Seminar The Role of AI in the Humanities

Talk
Leiden HumAN
Author

Jelena Prokic

Published

June 10, 2023

Sails Lunch Time Seminar: The Role of AI in the Humanities

Ever since the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the vast majority of research at the intersection of the Humanities and AI was dedicated to the ethical side of AI and how AI impacts our cultures and societies. While philosophy and critical thinking of AI remain indispensable research areas in the Humanities, lately there has been a surge of research that uses AI to investigate diverse questions in the Humanities.

In this talk I will address the recently established research group Leiden Humanities AI and NLP group, Leiden HumAN, which works at the intersection of AI and the Humanities. The group focuses on development and application of NLP and deep learning methods in diverse areas of the Humanities, including Linguistics, History, East-Asian studies and Anthropology. The goal is to bring together traditional and state-of-the-art computational methods and foster innovative research in the Humanities. At the same time, the research objective is to increase the role of the Humanities in the development of socially responsible and diverse AI. I will present several ongoing research projects in which members of the group are involved.

I will also introduce the BA minor Digital Humanities & Atificial Intelligence, an initiative by the Leiden University Centre for Digital Humanities at the Faculty of Humanities. Tailored to appeal to students from all fields of humanities research, the minor aims to complement BA studies with a skill set that includes a foundation in programming, text and image analysis, while offering a space for thinking about and debating digitization, and the influence of AI in our daily lives. The Artificial Intelligence track, starting from the 2023/24 academic year, will offer a deep dive into the theories and advanced methods, including NLP and deep learning, needed to work with and understand the AI revolution.

Location

Online

Date & Time

Monday 12 June 2023, 12:00 - 13:00 (CEST)

Registration

Click here to register