This site provides a documentary record of the AI as Infrastructure project. AIINFRA will explore whether Large Language Models (LLMs) could enable a new era of transnational historical research. The project will run from 2024 – 2026 and be led by the HASS Digital Research Hub at The Australian National University. The project team includes representatives from the Australian Parliamentary Library, the National Library of Australia, the Aotearoa / New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs, the UK National Archives, the UK History of Parliament project, and the ANU Library, with academic input from King’s College London. Indigenous guidance is provided by the Scaffolding Cultural Co-Creativity project, and Taiuru & Associates Ltd.

AIINFRA will design and build a prototype open-source LLM tool tailored for historical research, but this will be in service of the primary goal of understanding the technical potential of LLMs and developing test categories appropriate to the academic and GLAM communities. To limit the scope of the project, focus will be placed on historical research. Source material will be limited to Hansard records from Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom from the year 1901. Biases in the Hansard documents will require the LLMs to manage cultural and ethical issues, prompting consideration of Indigenous AI and data sovereignty. A subsidiary goal of the project is to explore the potential of enriching LLMs with secondary sources and multimedia to provide broader cultural and academic context.