2023.Jan.17

REPORTS

The 8th BAIRAL Research Meeting for 2022 Report on “Digital Humanities and AI: Particularity, Commonality and Bias”

On December 16, 2022, the 8th BAIRAL research meeting for 2022, organized by the research assistants of the B’AI Global Forum, was held online. Associate Professor Ikki Ohmukai of the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology at the University of Tokyo was invited to speak on the topic “Digital Humanities and AI: Particularity, Commonality and Bias.”

Associate Professor Ohmukai is a researcher who has been involved in research and development on digital humanities, web informatics and scholarly communication utilizing AI and other technologies, including leading the development of “CiNii” at the National Institute of Informatics, where he previously worked.

In this presentation, he first introduced the latest research and case studies on how AI is contributing to expanding scalability and outreach of research results, through steady progress of its utilizing particularly in language processing and image processing in the humanities, which is often considered as being remote from information technology. Furthermore, the presentation provided suggestive points of discussion on the possibilities for further collaboration, by focusing on the conceptual differences between the humanities and AI, or what the researchers and engineers from both fields are aiming for or want to clarify.

The speakers’ perspectives on the utilization of AI to solve social problems, the integration of arts and sciences and the collaboration of diverse experts and actors from the bottom-up are overlapped with the discussions at the B’AI Global Forum so far. In the future, it is desirable to create more opportunities for actors from various fields, affiliations and positions to collaborate on interdisciplinary research and activities. BAIRAL will continue its research and training so that it can contribute to society as a media/community that can lead to such opportunities.