aiinfra.anu.edu.au
Project website
Read more about the project, its outputs, and its partners.
AI as Infrastructure (AIINFRA)
This project explores whether Large Language Models (LLMs) could enable a new era of transnational historical research.
About this image
Li Zhang.
About the project
- Funder
Australian National University
- Timeframe
2024–2026
- In partnership with
The Australian National University and King's College London
- The National Archives' project lead
The project is led by the HASS Digital Research Hub at The Australian National University (ANU). The project team includes representatives from:
- The Australian Parliamentary Library
- The National Library of Australia
- The Aotearoa (New Zealand) Department of Internal Affairs
- The UK National Archives
- The UK History of Parliament project
- The ANU Library
The project also includes academic input from King’s College London. Indigenous guidance is provided by the Scaffolding Cultural Co-Creativity project, and Taiuru & Associates Ltd.
The AI as Infrastructure (AIINFRA) project will design and build a prototype open-source Large Language Model (LLM) tool tailored for historical research. This is to support the primary goal of understanding the technical potential of LLMs and developing test categories appropriate to the academic and galleries, libraries, archives, museums communities. To limit the scope of the project, focus will be placed on historical research.
Source material will be limited to Hansard records from Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom from the year 1901. Biases in the Hansard documents will require the LLMs to manage cultural and ethical issues, prompting consideration of Indigenous AI and data sovereignty. A secondary goal of the project is to explore the potential of enriching LLMs with secondary sources and multimedia to provide broader cultural and academic context.