<strong>Selwyn</strong> <strong>Times</strong> Wednesday <strong>January</strong> <strong>10</strong> <strong>2024</strong> 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 <strong>Selwyn</strong> 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 <strong>Selwyn</strong> <strong>Times</strong> 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 <strong>Selwyn</strong> District. The answers were so inaccurate (termed “hallucinating”) that I found them amusing and the <strong>Selwyn</strong> <strong>Times</strong> published an article (<strong>January</strong> 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 <strong>Selwyn</strong>’s history even though I am aware that most of <strong>Selwyn</strong>’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 <strong>Selwyn</strong> 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 <strong>Selwyn</strong> Library program, Ka Korero o Waikirikiri <strong>Selwyn</strong> 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 <strong>Selwyn</strong>, 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 <strong>Selwyn</strong>, 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 <strong>Selwyn</strong> 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. Charitable Trust DRIVER EDUCATION TO FIND OUT WAYS YOU CAN SUPPORT YOUR COMMUNITY GO TO www.proactivedrive.org.nz
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