Using LLMs to trace alchemical knowledge and decode 17th century letters(resobscura.substack.com)

160 points by benbreen 1 month ago | 38 comments

A Res Obscura Substack post by historian Benjamin Breen arguing AI labs should fund historical research, with examples of using frontier LLMs to trace alchemy and decode 17th-century letters.

AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder(resobscura.substack.com)

258 points by findhorn 1 year ago | 270 comments

Using generative AI as part of historical research: three case studies(resobscura.substack.com)

241 points by benbreen 1 year ago | 196 comments

Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop(resobscura.substack.com)

463 points by benbreen 3 months ago | 222 comments

Benjamin Breen's Res Obscura essay arguing quality non-fiction books counter AI slop, introducing a vibe-coded tool indexing prize-winning books.

Margaret Mead, technocracy, and the origins of AI's ideological divide(resobscura.substack.com)

128 points by benbreen 2 years ago | 66 comments

The open-stack library: a futuristic technology from the 18th century(resobscura.substack.com)

41 points by arbesman 3 years ago | 18 comments