Lecture Summary: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Scientific Research (History as a Model)
The lecture explored the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in historical scientific research, positioning it as a methodological partner rather than a replacement for the historian. AI serves as an advanced research assistant that accelerates technical processes, analyzes "Big Data," compares historical narratives, and contributes to the digital restoration and reconstruction of the past—despite its inherent lack of historical intuition and value-based judgment. Conversely, the lecture warned of significant methodological and ethical risks, such as digital hallucinations, the "illusion of neutrality," the generalization of models at the expense of a historical event's uniqueness, and the potential for intellectual laziness. The lecture concluded by advocating for a hybrid methodology: utilizing AI for preliminary exploration while subjecting its outputs to rigorous verification. It emphasized that the historian must retain the primary role in human and critical interpretation, noting that the historian’s function in the age of AI has shifted from merely collecting information to investigating and articulating it with a conscious historical perspective.