minutes for M#arch 2025

Author: nevrome

content/minutes/2025_03_07.md

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+---
+title: "45th regular meeting"
+date: 2025-03-07
+---
+
+7 ppl attended
+
+## Discussion
+
+This meeting was almost entirely dominated by a spontaneous discussion about applications, effects, and ethics of artificial intelligence in archaeology. Here are some of the tangible resources that where mentioned and referenced:
+
+- A deep-learning-based "search engine" for Archaeologists
+	- News article: https://phys.org/news/2022-02-google-archaeologists.html
+	- Dashboard: https://agnessearch.nl
+	- Thesis: https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/handle/1887/3274287
+- Stephen Wolfram's explanation of the inner workings of LLMs
+	- Blog post: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-is-chatgpt-doing-and-why-does-it-work
+- Jean-Claude Gardin, one of the founders of archaeological computing, and his struggle with archaeological expert systems
+	- A summary of his theoretical work: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-015-9241-3
+- A postdoctoral fellowship to support the understanding of AI in the social sciences and humanities
+	- Call for submissions: https://apply.sloan.org/prog/call_for_submissions_metascience_and_ai_postdoctoral_fellowship
+
+The topics raised in the discussion included the misleading semblance of objectivity projected by LLMs (linked to long-standing divides in archaeological theory about positivism), how AI applications may be a strong and convincing argument for Open Data in archaeology, and different levels of transparency in Open Source AI models.
+
+Multiple SIG members were inspired by this discussion:
+- See the CAA/SSLA chat at https://matrix.to/#/#caa-ssla:archaeo.social for an AI-related project outline proposed by Zack Batist
+- We decided to invite knowledgeable colleagues to talk about AI (and scripting languages?) in our presentation format. Martin Hinz has already send out multiple emails to invite potential speakers.
+
+## TFQA project
+
+In this meeting we spent little time on the SIG's ongoing TFQA project. But James Allison, Lisa Steinmann, and Joe Roe recently made good progress on that. See the CAA/SSLA chat and various open and already closed pull requests in the https://github.com/jallison7/LDen repository.
+
+## Next SIG Meeting: Wednesday, April 4, 2025
+