Resource List: AI and Historic Preservation
In the last year, tools connected to artificial intelligence (AI) have claimed to make every industry from healthcare to the creative arts more efficient. But what about historic preservation?
On March 7, Preservation Leadership Forum (the professional membership program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation) hosted an introductory webinar about AI and its uses in preservation practice. The session went over the basics of using AI, critical considerations about its limitations and impacts to the environment, and the importance of considering an organizational policy around its usage. The session ended with two case studies from those in the field highlighting what worked and what didn’t in two different aspects of preservation work.
The resource list below was developed to provide further information beyond the session, to give users a place to keep abreast of developments in the AI space, and to help attendees and viewers decide for themselves about how to embrace and use this technology.
Forum Webinar: The Promise and Perils of AI in Historic Preservation (March 7, 2025)
Moderator:
Priya Chhaya, Associate Director of Content, National Trust for Historic Preservation
Panelists:
Joi Austin, Senior Program Officer, Economic Vitality, Main Street America
Susan Lattanzi, Vice President of Information Technology and Real Estate, National Trust for Historic Preservation
Nate Boyless, National Manager, Environmental Innovation and Technology, Terracon
Arielle Harris, Architectural Historian
Learning
Worksheet
- Leveraging AI Prompt Worksheet (Joi Austin, Main Street America, March 2025)
Book
- Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick
- Also read Ethan Mollick on the Four Rules of Co-Intelligence (July 2024, Forbes)
Glossaries
- Glossary of Terms: Generative AI Basics (MIT loan Teaching & Learning Technologies)
- Artificial Intelligence Glossary: Neural Networks and Other Terms Explained (New York Times)
To Stay Up to Date on New Developments
Podcasts/Audio Shows
Limitations
Environmental
- Explained: Generative AI’s Environmental Impact (MIT News, January 2025)
- The Uneven Distribution of AI’s Environmental Impacts (Harvard Buisness Review, July 2024)
- AI has an environmental problem. Here’s what the world can do about that (UN Environmental Programme, July 2024)
- The US must balance climate justice challenges in the era of artificial intelligence (Brookings, January 2024)
- AI’s Climate Impact Goes beyond Its Emissions (Scientific American, September 2023)
- Scientific American has a March 2025 special issue dedicated to this topic but it is subscriber only.
Privacy
On Bias, Hallucinations, Transparency, and More
- The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking (Microsoft, February 2025) or read this Gizmodo Article about the study.
- AI's Trust Problem (Harvard Business Review, May 2024)
- When AI Gets it Wrong: Addressing Hallucinations and Bias (MIT Sloan Teaching & Learning Technologies)
- How AI Can Make History (The Verge, February 2024)
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