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Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#61

Post by gabeio »

Decabytes wrote: post #49

I’m interested to give this a go because I want to practice reading cursive. I do a lot of longhand writing including writing all my notes in cursive. It’s exciting to watch my binding fill up with all sorts of different subjects! I like to write in cursive for a few reasons 1. I find it makes my hand cramp less 2. It offers some shallow privacy in public 3. I don’t want to lose the skill 4. It’s fun!

All of the same reasons I love practicing a little calligraphy! I love how it looks as well. I don’t use a special pen but just add my own style to my cursive to make it look even nicer. But I used to write my notes in school with calligraphy (mostly because it gave me an excuse to not care about the subject) but it made the teachers hate me because I would never finish copying their scribbles fast enough.

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#62

Post by musicale »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #37
iambateman wrote: post #7

This is all very cool so I’m not trying to be dismissive. In a lot of ways, giving a hobby out as a way to participate in the national archives is an end in itself. But…computers can definitely do this way better, right?

> This is all very cool so I’m not trying to be dismissive. In a lot of ways, giving a hobby out as a way to participate in the national archives is an end in itself. > But…computers can definitely do this way better, right? No. Cursive writing is analog and fluid, lacking consistency across authors and often inconsistent by an individual author as well. When done well, it could be classified as its own art form. Whe…

iPad seems to do OK, but it has more to go by since it has the timing and pressure as well as the written text.

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#63

Post by tedunangst »

demosthanos wrote: post #38
jncfhnb wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would challenge you to find a picture of text that you think a human can read and OCR cannot. I’m happy to demonstrate. The text shown in this article is trivial.

The archivists themselves say that they run into such texts often enough that this program was needed: > The agency uses artificial intelligence and a technology known as optical character recognition to extract text from historical documents. But these methods don’t always work, and they aren’t always accurate. They are absolutely aware of the advances in these tools, so if they say they're not completely there yet…

Can someone please post a sample of one of these images that can only be read by a human for us naive OCR believers to see?

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#64

Post by [deleted] »

jonahx wrote: post #17
iambateman wrote: post #7

This is all very cool so I’m not trying to be dismissive. In a lot of ways, giving a hobby out as a way to participate in the national archives is an end in itself. But…computers can definitely do this way better, right?

I had the same thought but maybe on old hand writing they can't? EDIT: I tried giving the sample to 4o and it gave: The following is the declaration of James Lambert, a soldier of the Revolutionary War in North America. The said James Lambert this day personally appeared in the Probate Court of the County of Dearborn in the State of Indiana and at the November Term of said Court (1841), it being a court of record cre…

[deleted]

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#65

Post by [deleted] »

tedunangst wrote: post #54
demosthanos wrote: post #30

Before commenting asking about why they don't just use LLMs, please note that the article specifically calls out that they do, but it's not always a viable solution: > The agency uses artificial intelligence and a technology known as optical character recognition to extract text from historical documents. But these methods don’t always work, and they aren’t always accurate. The document at the top is likely an especi…

Something about extraordinary claims and extraordinary evidence? The evidence presented, a seemingly easily transcribed image, is hardly persuasive.

[deleted]

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#66

Post by nozzlegear »

Osyris wrote: post #55
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Current LLMs can absolutely do this as well as you can, probably better. This is obviously disprovable, in that if they could, they would, and this call to action would not exist.

That's quite a lot of faith you have in them.

Them being the National Archives? What about the National Archives makes you think they're particularly inept at utilizing LLMs?

I'm tired of this brand of dismissive cynicism.

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#67

Post by Levitz »

jb1991 wrote: post #18
posterguy wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i dont think the problem is the lack of resources to learn how to read and write cursive

Except that it does say that in the article, that’s it's a lack of education in reading cursive.

Those two statements aren't at odds with each other.

For example, there's a great abundance of resources to learn about music theory and such too, the average person doesn't know such things because they aren't interested.

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#68

Post by varenc »

tptacek wrote: post #39
demosthanos wrote: post #30

Before commenting asking about why they don't just use LLMs, please note that the article specifically calls out that they do, but it's not always a viable solution: > The agency uses artificial intelligence and a technology known as optical character recognition to extract text from historical documents. But these methods don’t always work, and they aren’t always accurate. The document at the top is likely an especi…

OK, fair enough, but can you find one in this article that's hard for an LLM? The gnarliest one I saw, 4o handled instantly, and I went back and looked carefully at the image and the text and I'm sold. Like if this is a crowdsourcing project, why not do a first pass with an LLM and present users with both the image and the best-effort LLM pass? Later I signed up, went to the current missions, and they all seem to pos…

My guess is because it’s the Smithsonian, they’re just not willing to trust an LLM’s transcription enough to put their name on it. I imagine they’re rather conservative. And maybe some AI-skeptic protectionist sentiments from the professional archivists. Seems like it could change with time though.

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#69

Post by galangalalgol »

_pktm_ wrote: post #60
jb1991 wrote: post #15

> particularly for Americans who never learned cursive in school. American schools don’t teach it anymore?!

Not that I can tell, unless you encounter a teacher who (personally) believes it’s worthwhile. The real problem, IMO, is that they don’t teach cursive but also don’t teach typing. They’ve thrown laptops at the kids without giving them the basic skill necessary to be effective in that medium.

They stopped teaching cursive for a number of years but all the schools in my area start it around age 6 or 7 now. They start typing the next year with some horribly boring typing program.

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#70

Post by CamperBob2 »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #33
CamperBob2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your experience is obsolete.

Oh, ok then.

I mean, all you have to do is feed the image to ChatGPT, and it will read it basically as well as you can.

Denying/downvoting reality is always an option, of course.

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