Contact: Sven Alexander Neeb

Project at the Centre:

Large Language Models as Intangible Carriers of Collective Memory – Epistemic Filters, Digital Infrastructures, and Global Power Asymmetries

Large Language Models are becoming increasingly influential in the production and circulation of knowledge about history, culture, and politics. This project explores how these systems shape processes of collective remembering and examines how digital memory is constituted when narratives about the past are generated through AI. From an interdisciplinary perspective, the project focuses on contexts in which historical knowledge is algorithmically filtered, hierarchised, and reformulated, arguing that these processes reveal specific cultural, political, and technological biases. The project is guided by the following questions: How do different language models represent historical events across linguistic and geopolitical contexts? Which narratives are stabilised, which perspectives remain marginal, and which forms of remembering and forgetting emerge through moderation, training data, and model design? How do infrastructure, hardware, and energy consumption condition the seemingly immaterial character of AI-based memory? The project aims to develop an empirical and conceptual understanding of how collective memory is being transformed by generative AI and how these transformations are embedded in global power relations.

Research interests:

• Collective memory and digital memory infrastructures
• Large Language Models and AI governance
• Materiality of digital technologies
• Digital sovereignty and global power asymmetries
• Critical media and technology studies
• Cultures of remembrance in the age of AI