Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 15.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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        Date: 2023-05-12 05:29:28+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: two questions

Yesterday I and a three or four colleagues attended a session designed
to help first-year PhD students make the most of their doctoral studies.
In a university with a well-known department of digital humanities it's
not surprising that many would be curious about the field when I
introduced myself, some show genuine interest and a couple have some
involvement. But still one of them asked me, "So... what IS digital
humanities?" I was not lost for words, but evidently my answer was
insufficiently simple to keep her attention before she wandered off and
someone else started asking whether what he was involved with qualified.
Ruminating on the incident this morning has led me to wonder how others
answer that question in brief. So, in a nutshell, what is it? Does anyone
have a good one or two-sentence response?

In a subsequent conversation, AI came up, as might be expected. A
student wanted to know whether AI posed a threat, and if so, what he
might do about it. Given the number of well-funded 'bad actors' involved
with AI, the answer to the first was not difficult to put into one word,
then expand that into a range of examples. But what particularly
interested me was the second question, how to intervene. One academic I
know advises us to get involved in the work of AI labs, but that seems
rather impractical for all but the very few. So, my question here: what
can we do?

Comments most welcome.

Yours,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews;  Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk


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