History AI - Part I: AI Making History
In the summer of 2023, I embarked on an ambitious journey to collect an extensive archive of historical images, totaling close to 2 million, from a public online repository. These captivating images capture typed or handwritten accounts of war experiences, predominantly in a single non-English language, although they encompass various other languages as well.
While I won’t disclose the name of the archive or share any documents here, I may provide some information in the future. My primary objective is to leverage modern image, text, and data mining technologies to extract valuable insights from these documents. By employing AI, I aim to identify individuals, events, locations, and precise date/time references mentioned in the accounts. Moreover, I strive to uncover meaningful patterns such as relationships and other human interactions within the dataset.
As a second order objective, I seek to assess the feasibility of achieving these goals using readily available tools, whether open-source or commercially. This evaluation includes considerations such as the accuracy of the results, overall processing speed and performance, and cost implications. I aim to answer critical questions like, “Can this process scale effectively? Is it possible to industrialize this approach? Does it deliver meaningful value?”
Furthermore, this undertaking provides an opportunity for me to explore and learn numerous new technologies. While sharpening my coding skills, particularly in Go(lang), I also delve into the vast realm of AI technologies. This endeavor involves constantly improving my proficiency in cloud computing, along with exploring diverse coding languages and frameworks.
Finally, I plan to document and share my journey through blogging.
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