#DigitalHumanities

Artificial intelligence is reshaping the study of history, delivering powerful new research tools while raising urgent questions about accuracy and interpretation. As large language models gain traction, historians are reevaluating how to research, organize, and narrate our past. This shift holds clear implications for educators, students, and policymakers in Thailand.

AI excels at processing vast digitized materials quickly—from handwritten archives to books and scholarly papers. For historians at leading universities, the technology promises greater research efficiency and even creative storytelling by surfacing connections and alternative narrative structures. Yet the same capability invites scrutiny over accuracy, context, and the evolving role of the historian.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly revolutionizing the field of history, offering historians both powerful new tools and unprecedented dilemmas, according to recent research and expert testimony reported by The New York Times (nytimes.com). As large language models (LLMs) like Google’s NotebookLM and OpenAI’s ChatGPT gain traction, scholars are reckoning with the profound changes AI might bring to the process of researching, organizing, and ultimately narrating our shared past—a phenomenon with significance for educators, students, and even policymakers in Thailand.

A breakthrough in reading the ancient, carbonized scrolls from Herculaneum marks a new era of speed and precision. Researchers are leveraging high-energy data capture and advanced imaging to unlock text buried for nearly two millennia. This progress signals a leap from painstaking, line-by-line reconstruction to broader discoveries of Roman thought, politics, science, and daily life at the end of antiquity. The work builds on non-destructive imaging techniques that peer inside rolled papyri without unrolling them, preserving fragile material for generations to come.

The race to read the lost words of Ancient Rome has entered a new era of speed and precision as researchers leverage powerful scientific tools to decipher carbonized papyrus scrolls buried for nearly two millennia. Recent advancements, highlighted by an article in The Economist (economist.com), reveal that the laborious process of recovering text from the “Herculaneum scrolls”—once a slow crawl—has shifted into a faster, more promising phase, thanks to cutting-edge particle accelerator technology.