ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces artificial intelligence (AI) as a maker of histories. It notes that algorithms generate most of the histories made around the globe and that these histories can shape access to goods, information, education, healthcare, and justice. It emphasizes the importance of recognizing AI algorithms and tools as artificial historians and their outputs as artificial histories. It argues for the importance of transparency in AI-driven history making and provides an overview of the remainder of the book, beginning with Turing’s idea of an imitation game in two rooms and Aristotle’s idea of logic as a mixture of self-contained and referring truths and prior beliefs or endoxa.
