Between manuscript and machine – Francis Borchardt and Matthew Monger (MF AI Seminar 2025)

Описание: Francis Borchardt (NLA) and Matthew Monger (MF) - Between Manuscript and Machine: The Advent of the Newest Philology

This presentation explores how artificial intelligence introduces a new phase in the long history of philology. It takes as its starting point a digital-analytic project that uses LLMs to read heterogeneous archival materials, and asks how the automated extraction and correlation of textual and material evidence redefines the act of interpretation itself. Whereas traditional philology seeks meaning through critical comparison and contextual inference, AI operates through pattern recognition and association based on probabilities. This presentation argues that this algorithmic philologic exercise both extends and destabilizes the humanistic ideal of close reading. While it obviously expands our capacity to uncover connections between distinct texts and materials, it lacks any interpretive depth. By confronting AI’s “understanding without understanding,” the project forces the humanities to encounter their own methodological assumptions anew. This renewed encounter reveals the continuities and disjunctions between human and machine reading, and thereby underlines that while AI can become an important agent in the philologic enterprise, it cannot do it without the aid of human interpretation.

On Tuesday 16 December 2025, the Lab for Manuscript Studies and Digital Research (L-MaSDR) at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society hosted a half-day seminar exploring the opportunities, challenges, and responsibilities that artificial intelligence presents for humanistic research.