Will A.I. Revolutionise How We Write History — or Flatten It?

The ability of Artificial Intelligence to read and summarize text is already making it a useful tool for scholarship. How will it change the stories we tell about the past? Bill Wasik, New York Times Magazine’s editorial director has some thoughts ('A.I. is Poised to Rewrite History. Literally', NYTMadgazine June 16, 2025).

He points out that in the digital age, historians face an embarrassment of riches: more digitized sources than they could read in a lifetime. From JSTOR to Google Books, the sheer volume of searchable archives has changed the way we approach the past. Now, artificial intelligence promises to take that transformation even further, offering tools that can scan, summarize, and synthesize enormous amounts of text in seconds. But as with every technological leap in the organization of knowledge, from Callimachus’s “Pinakes” to the Dewey Decimal System, efficiency comes with trade-offs.

On one hand, the rise of large language models (LLMs) presents tantalizing opportunities. Why spend months sifting through sources when A.I. can do it in minutes? For nonfiction writers and historians overwhelmed by the deluge of information, there’s undeniable appeal in outsourcing the burden of reading. Scholars are already experimenting with these tools, and the idea of a future where a chatbot assists in synthesizing material across languages, continents, and centuries is no longer far-fetched.

But lurking behind the promise is a familiar danger: the flattening of nuance. Summarization, one of A.I.’s superpowers, risks turning textured, contradictory historical accounts into palatable, seemingly coherent narratives. Historian Lara Putnam has warned that digital search already encourages “finding without knowing where to look,” untethering researchers from the place-specific context that traditionally grounded their work. Artificial Intelligence could amplify that disconnect, replacing deep archival immersion with plausible-sounding syntheses that obscure as much as they reveal.

There’s also the risk that digitized and AI-parsed history reflects a narrow, biased archive — skewed toward English, elite institutions, and official records. If we increasingly see the past through what is “digitizable”, Wasik argues that we may lose sight of those who’ve always lived at history’s margins.

Still, innovation marches on. Some developers envision e-books enhanced by embedded A.I., allowing readers to ask follow-up questions, explore original sources, or view timelines generated on demand. In this vision, the historian’s work isn’t a static text but a living, interactive experience; a book with a built-in research assistant. It’s a staggering possibility. Whether it heralds a utopia of democratized knowledge or a dystopia of oversimplified truths remains uncertain.

In the end, the key question may not be whether A.I. helps or hurts the writing of history, but what kind of history we want to write, and who we trust to write it.

Israel, Iran trade deadly strikes for fourth day with no signs of restraint

The US-allied Netanyahu regime’s attack with warplanes and drones against Iran has sparked an open conflict between the two long-time foes that threatens to spiral into a wider, more dangerous regional war. Since Friday, Israeli strikes have killed more than 200 people in Iran, including top generals and scientists but also civilians. Iran has retaliated by launching hundreds of drones and missiles against Israel, some of which have penetrated Israel’s vaunted aerial defense system, killing two dozen people so far. Quite apart from the human toll, if war were to break out with Iran and the country were to descend into chaos, we could expect a significant increase in the looting and trafficking of ancient Iranian artefacts. This pattern has already been observed in regions destabilized by conflict, such as Iraq and Syria, where breakdowns in state control and heritage protection led to widespread pillaging of archaeological sites and museums.

Iran, with its exceptionally rich archaeological heritage, would be especially vulnerable. Many of the artefacts that might appear on the global market are already being trafficked to some extent, even in the absence of war. Many of them are ending up on the US market.

Among the types of artefacts most likely to surface are those from the Achaemenid period (c. 550–330 BCE), including imperial reliefs, cylinder seals, inscriptions in Old Persian cuneiform, and finely crafted gold and silver vessels. These objects are highly sought after for their associations with the grandeur of the ancient Persian Empire and their distinctive iconography. Material from the Elamite civilisation (c. 2700–539 BCE) would also be at risk. Though less well known, Elamite artefacts (such as bronze and terracotta figurines, ritual vessels, and inscribed tablets) have considerable appeal to collectors of ancient Near Eastern antiquities.

Artefacts from the Parthian and Sassanian periods (c. 247 BCE–651 CE) are likewise likely to be targeted, particularly silver vessels bearing royal motifs, coins, and decorative metalwork. Sassanian material has long circulated on the antiquities market and is often looted from tombs or hoards.

Iran's Islamic-era heritage would be vulnerable as well. This includes glazed ceramics such as lustreware, metalwork, architectural fragments, and especially Persian manuscripts (Qur’ans, scientific texts, poetry, and calligraphic works) which are already of high value on the international market.

Finally, prehistoric artefacts such as chlorite vessels, stone tools, and anthropomorphic figurines from sites such as Jiroft, Tepe Sialk, or Shahr-i Sokhta, have also appeared in increasing numbers in recent decades, often looted from burial sites and sold under vague or misleading labels.

Looted artefacts typically reach the market through a network of smuggling routes, many of which already run through neighbouring countries such as Turkey, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates. Once outside Iran, objects are often laundered with forged provenance documents and sold through private dealers, online platforms, and auction houses in Europe, North America, and East Asia. Enforcement of international conventions like UNESCO 1970 remains inconsistent, and legal grey areas continue to be exploited by traffickers and buyers alike.

Iranian authorities have already seized significant numbers of looted or illicitly trafficked antiquities in recent years, including coins, statuettes, and manuscripts. One major case involved the appearance of numerous chlorite vessels from the so-called Jiroft culture in the early 2000s, which suddenly flooded the market after widespread looting in the region. Other high-profile seizures have included fragments of Achaemenid reliefs, such as a Persepolis bas-relief confiscated in New York in 2017. Yet many more objects have undoubtedly slipped through customs controls and now reside in private collections or museum storerooms.

The experience of Iraq and Syria provides a grim precedent. In the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, looters stripped archaeological sites, and museums were ransacked. Similarly, in Syria, various armed groups systematically looted sites for revenue. Some items were sold on the open market; others disappeared into private collections. Should the war escalate and Iran suffer a comparable collapse in heritage protection, it is likely that a similarly diverse range of high-value artefacts (particularly those with clear market demand) would appear in increasing numbers across the global antiquities trade and in the US.

How can you tell if something is written by AI?

Evan Edinger: "I Can Spot AI Writing Instantly — Here’s How You Can Too"

Posted on You Tube by Evan Edinger Jun 8, 2025

.