Selwyn_Times: January 10, 2024

Selwyn Times Wednesday January 10 2024
18
Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz
UNCLEAR: AI chatbots
couldn’t confirm
when electricity
was installed in the
Dunsandel Hotel.
PHOTO: SUPPLIED
BY S. COLLINS & D.
CHESNEY.
Right – Nail driving
for ladies was once a
feature of horticultural
shows in Dunsandel
– this image was
generated by Bing’s
DALL-E3.
OpenAI: Are historians in jeopardy?
Retired
microbiology
lecturer and
amateur
historian
Mike
Noonan, who
lives near Dunsandel,
discusses how accurate
internet programs
are when it comes to
towns and settlements
in the Selwyn District,
a year after starting his
research
WHEN OpenAI released
ChatGPT3.5, an Artificial Intelligence
chatbot program, to the
public last November, I suspect
that most readers of the Selwyn
Times had never heard of AI.
Now, I suspect at least their
children are using it sometimes
to help with their homework. At
the time I “asked” the program
to “tell” me about the history of
some of the towns in the Selwyn
District. The answers were so
inaccurate (termed “hallucinating”)
that I found them amusing
and the Selwyn Times published
an article (January 18, 2023).
In the last 12 months there
have been huge developments in
AI, with many new companies
making their AI programs available
online and so I decided to
see if the AI programs would
now provide reliable information
of Selwyn’s history even though
I am aware that most of Selwyn’s
history is still in paper-based accounts
and not online.
I tried three free programs (as
I don’t use AI enough to justify
paying for access) and asked each
to “tell” me about the history
of Dunsandel 1872-1900 as I
knew that this topic was covered
online.
Claude from Anthropic gave
me a summary of key events
which would have sounded
authentic to somebody who did
not know about Dunsandel,
as the main story was largely
correct but the details were
not. When I requested further
information on one topic,
namely the first hall, again I
was provided with information
which was believable, except it
wrongly informed me the hall
was opened in 1883 – rather,
it opened in 1874. Claude
“admitted” that it did not have
a specific source for the details
that it had provided, but that the
program had generated historical
details based on knowledge of
similar halls from small rural
towns of that era and, given that
the towns of Selwyn had similar
early developments, the narrative
was only incorrect in a few
details. Claude had aimed “to
construct a believable narrative”
as it had no ability to search the
internet.
When I asked for only accurate
statements about Leeston, I received
“the most accurate statement
I can make is that, Leeston
is a town . . . that was established
in 1864 by the Canterbury Association”.
The date is correct
but the Canterbury Provincial
Council had taken over from the
Canterbury Association in 1853.
Google’s Bard divided its
response to the same questions
into more-or-less verified
information, but much of it was
general and there were inaccurate
statements. It appeared
that Bard may have managed to
find digital information that has
recently been put on the Selwyn
Library program, Ka Korero
o Waikirikiri Selwyn Stories
(SS) but it did not provide its
sources. When quizzed about
its statement, “the hotel did not
have electricity until 1895,” it
“apologised” for its error and
stated that “electricity was
supplied to Dunsandel in 1900
and gave three references for its
“conclusion”.
1. The book “Dunsandel: A
History of the Town and District”
by John Wilson (1972)
states that electricity was supplied
to Dunsandel in 1900.
2. The website of the Canterbury
Museum states that
electricity was introduced to
Dunsandel in 1900.
3. The book “Electrical Power
in New Zealand: A History” by
R.H. Chapman (1987) states that
a hydro-electric power station
was built at Coal Creek in 1899,
and that electricity was supplied
to Dunsandel in 1900.
I was not able to find either
book on the National Library
catalogue, but an article published
in 1920 (October 20, 1920,
page 3, Ellesmere Guardian)
reported that “a public meeting .
. . to discuss the question of supplying
electricity to the residents
of the Dunsandel district was
held in the Town Hall last Saturday
night”, which suggests to
me that Bard is “hallucinating”
with its 1900 date and seemingly
authoritative sources.
When I asked Microsoft Bing
(Copilot), using GPT 4, the same
questions, it searched the internet
and copied text almost verbatim,
supplying easy access to the
sources. Bing definitely managed
to find digital information that
has recently been put on SS. The
GPT 3.5 of one year ago only had
web information from before
September 2021.
While SS is not the only source
of online historical information
about Selwyn, local historians
are adding information regularly
to SS, and in the not too
distant future it will probably
be the main reference point. If
Bing is going to quote almost
verbatim from this site, why not
go straight to SS? The downside
is that information about, for
example, each town’s hall will
be added in separate, but linked,
articles in SS and if you wanted
an article about all the halls in
Selwyn, in chronological order,
you would need to download
each article separately and then
rearrange the text. I tried to get
Bing to chronologically integrate
separate articles about the users
of the first Dunsandel Hall
which are in SS, but this failed
as Bing would only consider one
article at a time. Before too long,
I suspect unskilled people will
be able to complete this task, and
this will be the advantage of AI.
Bing and other AI programs
can do other things, including
drawing pictures, given a text
statement. This is not very useful
for history, as drawings and
photographs taken at the time
are required. However, nail
driving for ladies was once a
feature of horticultural shows
in Dunsandel and I generated a
picture, using Bing DALL-E3 to
illustrate an article in SS, until,
hopefully, I can replace it with
the real thing.
While AI has made considerable
strides in the last year – e.g.
“alphafold”, which is able to
outperform scientists in the
prediction of the structure of
proteins – it is not as useful in
Selwyn history until we can get
more information on the web
and it can be a little smarter in
dealing with beginners like me.
I am still convinced that my
hobby as an amateur historian is
not in immediate jeopardy.
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