HAICu

Beeld en Geluid, the Memory of the Netherlands, Beeldbank Groningen: heritage collections are massively available online. They are crucial sources of information for all kinds of stories. What if you could search through those collections with a single search term and get the necessary context to tell a good story?

That is what research project HAICu wants to ensure with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) tools! The project should also make an important contribution to the further development of KI. Professor Lambert Schomaker is leading the operation, for which the National Science Agenda is releasing no less than 10.3 million euros in the coming years.

In the HAICu project, AI and Digital Humanities researchers collaborate with heritage professionals and interested citizens. Together they are trying to unlock scientific breakthroughs in large-scale multimodal (text, image, sound, etc.) digital heritage collections. To this end, the researchers are working on links between datasets so that the various sources of information can be analyzed together and experts can provide appropriate context.

The extraordinary challenges of cultural heritage offer a unique opportunity to push the boundaries of KI. Future techniques must be able to be used outside the laboratory, learn from datasets as small as possible, and continuously learn from users. These techniques must take into account the societal demand for accountable and explainable methods for creating multimodal narratives of our cultural heritage that extend beyond current large language models.