Comment by libraryofbabel

6 hours ago

Ex-historian here, now an engineer. Ben is one of the few historians really thinking in depth about the implications of LLMs for historical research and teaching: both the good (wow, they are really great at transcribing difficult handwritten documents now; you can use Claude Code to vibe code up quick visualizations for your research or teaching that would have taken weeks of work before), and the bad (students submitting AI-generated essays). Highly recommended reading.

It's also nice to see a working historian who posts to HN. (If there are any others, please raise your hand!) Our community is richer for the wide variety of non-engineering professions represented here, from medical doctors to truckers to woodworkers to pilots to farmers. Please keep posting, all of you.

Thank you! So glad people here are reading (I'm the author of the post). I'm doing student meetings and grading all day but happy to answer questions or discuss anything historical with the HN community in between!

I wouldn't call myself a historian, but I have been doing a history podcast since 2014.

I agree that Ben's writings on LLMs and how they impact the humanities/history are great reads. But I am also the perfect target market for that kind of discussion, dev by day amateur historian by night.