An Overview of the Artificial Intelligence History and its Applications in Historical Research

Abstract

In November 2022, a tool called ChatGPT-3.5 was launched by the company OpenAI. A free version was made available, allowing everyone to test the text generation capabilities of Artificial Intelligence using natural language commands. Throughout 2023, there was significant discussion in both higher education and basic education about the impacts of this innovation. However, it became evident that there is still a limited understanding of what Artificial Intelligence (AI) encompasses beyond its specific research areas. Additionally, very little is known about the history of its development, which traces back to the origins of computers. Thus, this article aims to outline the history of AI by initially addressing specialized historiography and the works of researchers themselves in order to highlight the main concepts involved. Based on these approaches, this work also aims to point out some possibilities that open up for historical research using the existing tools here and now, given that research conducted by historians using AI is still rare and incipient.