Res Obscura

Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

...so I vibe-coded a tool for finding more of them

AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder

Historians are finally having their AI debate

Using generative AI as part of historical research: three case studies

... in specific domains. Three case studies with GPT-4o, o1, and Claude Sonnet 3.5, and what they mean

Using Opus 5.5 to discover a new eyewitness record of the dodo

Frontier models can now produce novel historical knowledge, but in a really weird way

Simulating History with ChatGPT

The Case for LLMs as Hallucination Engines

Using LLMs to trace alchemical knowledge and decode 17th century letters

Using GPT-6 and Opus 5.5 to trace alchemical knowledge and decode 17th century letters

Translating Latin demonology manuals with GPT-4 and Claude

At long last, a real-world use case for AI!

When Jorge Luis Borges met one of the founders of AI

One reason I became a historian is the joy of encountering moments in the past that are foreign, yet also oddly familiar.

Role-playing with AI will be a powerful tool for writers and educators

Or, how well can GPT-4 simulate an acid trip in 1963?

Margaret Mead, technocracy, and the origins of AI's ideological divide

The anthropologist helped popularize both techno-optimism and the concept of existential risk

OpenAI's "Study Mode" and the risks of flattery

Serious learning requires friction, frustration... and other humans

What is happening to writing? Cognitive debt, Claude Code, the space around AI

"Cognitive debt," Claude Code, and the negative space around AI

Margaret Mead, John von Neumann, and the Prehistory of AI