S6E6: Hybrid Intelligence and AI-Ready Archives: AI Empowered by Humans

Transcript:

Erin Narloch  00:11

Welcome to the History Factory podcast. Over the next three series of podcasts, we’ll be talking with our head of technology enablement, Fred D’Silva, and we will be jumping into a variety of different topics. In this first mini-podcast installation, we’ll be discussing the concept of hybrid intelligence and how we deploy that when we think about AI-ready archives at History Factory, as well as how it impacts the development, the efficacy, and the reliability of our AI platform, Chroniqle. So, let’s go ahead and get into the conversation. Here we go.

Erin Narloch  01:06

Fred, I’m so excited to sit down and chat with you. The series about Chroniqle, you know, there’s so much to cover. I thought we would kick off today’s series of conversations kind of focusing around this concept of hybrid intelligence and how we use that at History Factory, and how that’s deployed when we’re working on Chroniqle and AI-ready archives. So, I just wanted to get kind of a sense from you, you know, should we be fearing that AI is going to, like, replace all of us? You’re a technologist, right? You’re the Head of Technology Enablement at History Factory. Kind of, what do you see to be this hard ceiling for AI?

Fred D’Silva  01:54

For sure. And also, thanks for having me on, Erin. Yeah, I mean, to put it bluntly, I don’t think AI is going to be replacing humans. At the end of the day, yeah, we’ll still have jobs. No, it’s definitely a transformative tool, just like how, like, when Google first came out with Google Search, or just the concept of search engines and how revolutionary that was, AI is also revolutionary and transformative in that method. At the end of the day, AI is really just a way to find similarities in what people are asking and then find, like, the most similar way to respond back. It’s not, like, an organic person with thoughts and the concept of morality and how to navigate, like, the human experience. That’s still us. And it’s all that to say that the concept of hybrid intelligence is really the key driver in making these tools useful for us as we navigate the world and do our jobs. The way that I can describe it is, especially with Chroniqle, it’s like having a super-suit to navigate through all of your history and context where, in the past, you might have had many researchers going through many, many pages of books, too, and articles and reports and magazines. Instead of having to spend all those cycles just trying to find information and piece together the relationships, the key events, things like that, you now have a super-machine that is generative AI in being able to know how those systems work and search that information quickly, and give it context. And I do want to stress, like, that’s one of the main drivers of Chroniqle is making sure the AI has enough context to understand what you’re asking and what it should deliver as a response.

Erin Narloch  04:15

Yeah, I think that’s a really important callout, this idea of context and the nuances that, you know, subject matter experts have, you know, that knowledge base when they’re working with clients over time. And I think Chroniqle does, you know, our process and our approach to Chroniqle really keeps that hybrid intelligence in mind. So, you know, from the onset, with what types of materials we’re including in the knowledge base, and working with archivists and strategists to curate, right, the most reliable assets, the ones, you know, those reports, those PDFs, those books with the most integrity. There’s a human component all along the way. And I think, especially when you think of the conversations you have with Chroniqle and the insights that it’s providing you, right, that the user is the human, right? It’s the human that is then applying those insights in real life.

Fred D’Silva  05:20

Yeah, for sure. I would say that, like, the challenge that we always want to—the challenge that we always want to overcome when it comes to using these AI tools is, again, the ability to make ideas and give you a breadth of information, helpful information, and helpful insight into that information, but also making sure that it’s steering on verified truth. And that’s one of the biggest drivers for Chroniqle is just making sure that all that information that is in your archives and your Google Drives, your file systems, things like that, we’re taking the—I want to say the ‘right’ information, quote, unquote, but ‘right’ being the most accurate information. So, making sure that your AI is working on, like, a source of truth that is reliable, the information is conveyed correctly, and making sure it’s able to get those snippets of information from all of those different, like, sources, and being able to create a response, a meaningful response, to be able to help answer the questions you might have about just, like, your own company’s history.

Erin Narloch  06:53

Yeah, I think that’s, you know, going back to what you said at the beginning of this conversation, this idea of Chroniqle acting like a super-suit for anyone in the role to supercharge kind of what they can accomplish, the efficiencies they can can drive, the idea of trust and reliability, you know, of the responses you’re receiving. I know in, you know, in my world of Business Insights and Performance, we utilize Chroniqle to get further faster, right, and other AI tools that we’re always checking along the way, and we have that kind of sense of ensuring that what’s provided is reliable and verifiable. And for us, it means that we can do a lot more work. Like, we can cover more ground. We can share insights more quickly. There’s just a lot more that we can accomplish.

Fred D’Silva 08:01

For sure. I do want to ask, like, how has just the use of hybrid intelligence with using, like, a tool like Chroniqle, or even some of the other tools that your department uses, how has it made, like, your own job easier, or has it changed how you and your team do your job?

Erin Narloch  08:21

Yeah, I think it is. So, it has provided us with the ability to synthesize, I think, information at a quicker speed. So, synthesis and dissemination of insights, information, knowledge to a broader base of individuals. It also has helped us test out theories, or kind of dig deeper on different aspects of a history that we could be looking into. We have found that, in our roles, we still have a duty, right, for fact-checking, accuracy, reliability, citability. That will always be something grounded in our roles as research strategists and, at History Factory, kind of what we do. But I think, yeah, I think it is—the term ‘hybrid intelligence’ within History Factory was coined from someone on the Business Insights and Performance team, and I think, you know, that, for me, kind of illustrates, to the point you made at the onset of this conversation, that this is another tool in our toolbox as strategists, researchers, you know, humanists, brand strategists, whomever we might—whatever role we might play, and it’s understanding when you flex more on the human side, or when you can rely more on the technology side, and providing, you know, that synthesis of knowledge and information that you can apply to business challenges today and in the future.

Fred D’Silva  09:58

For sure. I know that, like, for instance, some of the work that we do within History Factory relies on creating meaningful experiences to celebrate, like, a company’s legacy, whenever it’s, like, their major milestone, or if they’ve completed a monumental task and they want to be able to find ways in how the task that they’re doing can be given the recognition it deserves, just because it was such a monumentous move or project. And I would say that, with something like Chroniqle, having—being able to find those insights quicker, to see, like, how things were done previously in your history, whether it’s, like, how the founders had kind of shaped their way of the world or, like, the core values that they had that they’ve instilled into, like, these companies, a lot of that context gets lost. Not being able to find it and being able to use something like Chroniqle, you’re able to find, like, I would say, like, those distinguishable facts and insights into those, like, major milestones to help create, like, some of the experiences that we do or, like, be able to ideate, like, what were some major things that a company might have done that we should celebrate? It makes it easier to find information.

Erin Narloch  11:42

Oh, for sure. I think, you know, when I think of the responses we get from Chroniqle ending with ‘key patterns and insights,’ you know, or synthesizing those thematic areas that we’re investigating, Chroniqle does an incredible job in support of storytelling, commemoration, celebration. It also does an incredible job at synthesizing, you know, strategy from the past, or how an organization dealt with different, you know, different pivot points, and how that knowledge and insight could be applied today. So, I think we only, you know, scratched the surface in the use cases for Chroniqle with our clients and on our teams, and I think I’m really excited to see where we go to next. 

Fred D’Silva  12:32

For sure. 

Erin Narloch  12:33

Great.

Erin Narloch  12:40

So much to learn when you sit down and chat with Fred. I really hope you enjoyed that segment on hybrid intelligence and AI-ready archives. As we mentioned, check out the whole session we did on AI-ready archives back in Season 5, Episode 10, where Jason Dressel and Chris Juhasz talk about the topic in greater detail. Until next time. Thanks for tuning in.