Archaeology in the AI Era: Demystifying powerful and problematic systems shaping the future of the past

2026/01/01 by Eric Kansa · 2 voices
Social Sciences · Computer Science · Arts and Humanities · #Language and cultural evolution #Image Processing and 3D Reconstruction #Digital Humanities and Scholarship

paper · pdf · doi:10.11141/ia.71.15

Abstract

This essay explores how Large Language Models (LLMs) and the generative "Artificial Intelligence" (AI) services they power impact archaeology's information ecosystem. Most of the discussion focuses on the dangers of escalating costs, commercial dependency, indeterminacy and reliability, and the potential for bias amplification. The essay highlights the need for structural reforms in archaeology's professional incentive systems, especially those systems that measure and reward publishing practices.

Citations

• On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots
• AI and the problem of knowledge collapse
• Hallucinating with AI: Distributed Delusions and “AI Psychosis”
• Current Digital Archaeology

Discussions

• Yay! My essay on the impacts of Large Language Model (#LLM) # AI in # archaeology was just published: https:// doi.org/10.11141/ia.71.15 It looks at # bots and mass scraping on the infrastructure supp [mastodon, 14 points, 1 comments]
• The essay highlights the need for structural reforms in archaeology's professional incentive systems, especially those systems that measure and reward publishing practices. doi.org/10.11141/ia.... 🏺 [bsky, 5 points, 0 comments]

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