Shaping the Future of our Past with AI: “Humans of AI” and World Digital Preservation Day
This week at Information Labs, we are celebrating a powerful convergence. Yesterday, November 4th, we premiered the first episode of our new video series, Humans of AI. Tomorrow, November 6th, institutions around the globe will mark World Digital Preservation Day.
This timing is no coincidence. It’s a statement.
In a world grappling with the accelerating pace of artificial intelligence, the narrative is often one of disruption. However, for us and the global community of libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM), AI represents one of the most powerful allies we have in a critical, ongoing mission: preserving and activating our collective human memory.
We are thrilled to officially introduce Humans of AI — A Journey Through Intelligence, Memory & Culture.
This 10-part video series, produced by information labs and supported by Internet Archive Europe, brings to life the intersection of artificial intelligence and cultural heritage. Across a series of punchy, story-driven video capsules, we move past the hype to meet the people and projects who are redefining how we read, remember, and reimagine our shared memory.
This isn’t AI as a threat—it’s AI as heritage in motion.
The Preservation Imperative
On World Digital Preservation Day, we are reminded that our cultural heritage is fragile. Centuries of manuscripts crumble, digital files decay, languages vanish, and vast archives—both physical and digital—remain dark and inaccessible. Preservation is not a passive act of locking things away; it is an active, constant effort to keep our stories alive, searchable, and connected.
This is where the “Humans of AI” come in.
The series kicks off with our first episode, released yesterday, Episode 1 — Transkribus: From Dust to Data. It’s the perfect introduction to our theme, profiling the incredible Transkribus platform, which turns centuries of unreadable handwriting into searchable, digital knowledge. It showcases how AI can empower researchers to breathe digital life into historical manuscripts, unlocking voices once lost to time.
But Transkribus is just the beginning. Over the next three months, the Humans of AI series will take you on a journey across the GLAM ecosystem, showing how:
- Open-source tools are democratizing innovation, as seen with Hugging Face and the community-building power of AI4LAM.
- National institutions are implementing AI at a massive scale, from the National Library of Norway (KB Norway) preserving Nordic languages to Europeana connecting culture across borders.
- AI is changing how we interact with collections, allowing us to have a conversation with 17th-century French literature via Litte_Bot or improve the experience of museum visitors thanks to the feedback collected through AI glasses.
- We are building new kinds of memory, from the profound philosophical questions of Synthetic Memories to connecting cultural memory with planetary memory in ClimateGPT.
- The web of the past is being brought to life, as seen in the final capsule featuring the Internet Archive Europe’s own Webarchiving Display.
A Growing Global Movement
We are proud to be part of a vibrant, global movement dedicated to highlighting and harnessing AI for public good. This work is not happening in a vacuum. Researchers, universities, and public institutions worldwide are building and sharing tools to use AI as a force for access, equity, and preservation.
For a comprehensive look at how broad this field has become, we highly recommend exploring the AI Opportunity Inventory, a multi-stakeholder initiative hosted at the University of Texas School of Law. It is a fantastic database that tracks public-interest AI projects, and it clearly illustrates that the work featured in Humans of AI is part of a larger, systemic shift in how we apply technology to our most pressing cultural and societal challenges.
Join the Journey
Preservation in the 21st century is not just about saving static files. It’s about ensuring that the sum of human knowledge and creativity remains a living, dynamic, and accessible resource for future generations.
As these 10 capsules will show, AI is a creative partner, a powerful tool, and ultimately, a human endeavor.
We invite you to join us on this journey.
- Watch the first episode, “Transkribus: From Dust to Data,” available now.
- Subscribe to the series on our YouTube or Podcast channel or follow along on our website to be notified as each new episode is released.
- Share your thoughts with us. How do you see AI shaping the future of our past? Do you have other examples to share?
Written by Caroline De Cock, LL.M., Head of Research
