Research Talk: Is AI for me? Perspectives from the humanities – skills for artificial intelligence

In this episode, James Baker, director of digital humanities at the University of Southampton, joins Paola to discuss the skills for artificial intelligence. A historian by training, James works at the intersection of history, cultural heritage, and digital technologies. His interests lay in the history of collecting and describing collections and how curators describe historical collections. Increasingly, James is becoming about infrastructure and how to use it to meet the needs of intellectual agendas.

In this episode, Paola and James discussed the need to demystify the digital, the latest and shiniest things, and instead ground it within the continuity of research practice. They talk about the importance of equipping humanities researchers with the right skills to engage with artificial intelligence and how to help students navigate this ever-changing landscape. They also examine the role of the open access publishing platform Programming Historian plays in supporting the development of computational skills.