Temporalities and Values in an Epistemic Culture: Citizen Humanities, Local Knowledge, and AI-supported Transcription of Archives

Abstract

An enormous amount of handwritten documents in archives can only be accessed by experts trained in reading older handwriting. Through artificial intelligence (AI)-supported technology, they can now be transcribed and made available for wider audiences. To produce transcriptions an AI needs training and a feasible way is to invite citizens to fulfil such tasks. To understand how an epistemic culture develops in such work, this study conducted interviews with participants on how they associate value, meaning and recognise themselves as active epistemic subjects in relation to the project. Despite that the formation of an epistemic culture are beyond the influence and control of project owners, findings show a strong relation between participants’ knowledge of local history, and personal and emotional ties to archival content, for achieving high quality in AI-transcriptions.