Humanist Learning and Artificial Intelligences: Critical Literacies for Digital Worlds

Shifting technological landscapes have been shaping the epistemologies, methods, and workflows of classicists, historians, and archaeologists for more than a century. From the introduction of the camera to the digital and digitizing turns of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, new technologies have impacted our documentation, knowledge production, and knowledge sharing practices. Yet these technologies and their impacts have not always been subject to reflexive interrogation within our disciplines, particularly outside of digital humanities-focused scholarship and classrooms. As AI technologies—especially generative AI—have become widely accessible, there has been a wave of concern among educators around student learning outcomes and academic honesty. In addressing these challenges, this moment offers an opportunity. Our rapidly reforming digital reality invites reflexive dialogue around data and methods from humanist and social scientist perspectives that can serve critical learning outcomes. Using topics and examples drawn from classics, history, and anthropology, this paper will outline three AI-focused literacies that can be incorporated into humanities and social sciences teaching: the ability to identify and analyze the impact of taxonomic frameworks and data training inputs on algorithmic outputs; to understand the development of computational models and algorithmic reasoning and their applications; and to critically evaluate the ethical and environmental impacts of algorithmic reasoning and AI technologies. These learning objectives aim to cultivate core ancient Mediterranean studies competencies while fostering critical thinking and AI literacy by addressing the recursive relationship between historical and anthropological research and developing technologies over time. Critical assessment of the foundational structures and logics of AI systems and economies situates learners to critically assess the political, social, and environmental impacts of such systems on the study of the past and the world in the present.