History by Algorithms: AI and the Future of Historical Research

by Zvi Lotker

Overview

This book offers a first step towards getting machines to understand history in terms of analysing historical narratives. It uses computational intelligence and history texts as keys to ask different questions than have been asked about our human history so far.

The book is divided into three main parts. The first part discusses the mathematical language of history, the second part uses simple models to analyse historical laws written in mathematical language, and the third part discusses the impact of general Large Language Models (LLMs) on the study of history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783031936265
Publisher:	Springer Nature Switzerland
Publication date:	09/04/2025
Pages:	353
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Zvi Lotker is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Engineering at Bar-Ilan University, Israel since 2018. He graduated with a double B.Sc. in Mathematics, Computer Science, and Industrial Engineering, from Ben Gurion University in 1991. In 1997, he obtained an M.Sc. in Mathematics, and in 2003, obtained his Ph.D. in Distributed Algorithms, both from Tel Aviv University. He was Postdoctoral Fellow at the CWI in Amsterdam, MPI in Saarbrücken Germany, and Mascotte in Nice France from 2003 to 2006. He was Associate Professor in the Communication Systems Engineering department at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva in the Communication Systems Engineering department from 2010 to 2020.His main research areas are communication networks, online algorithms, sensor networks, and recently, social networks.

Table of Contents

Introduction.- Asymptotics in Digital Humanities.- Function Diagrams in Digital Humanities.- History of War.- History Through Clocks.- Networks and Macrohistory.- Networks Microhistory.- What Is a Computational Model for History.- History through the Core.- History after the Death of the Witnesses.- History while the Witnesses are Still Alive.- Propaganda in History.- Shastic terrorism.- Historian Machine.- Information and History.- Machine Learning and History.- Representing Historical Information.- Fake History.