The article advocates for public ownership of large language models (LLMs) used in artificial intelligence, especially in the context of historical and academic research. It argues that private companies’ control of these powerful tools is misaligned with values important to scholarship, such as transparency and inclusivity. The article calls for the development of open-access, publicly funded LLMs built with ethical and cultural considerations, so that control over interpretive technologies remains in the public domain and supports the broader interests of society and academia.
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