The debate around historians and AI is not as simple as “should we or shouldn’t we use it?” Sitting down with Sparrow McGovern in this February 2026 featured article for University Affairs.
“As AI becomes more pervasive, deciding when to use it — or not use it — becomes more complicated. L.K. Bertram, a professor of history at the University of Toronto, specializes in history, social media disinformation and the AI shift. In 2018, Dr. Bertram created an open classroom on Instagram about sex work and its history. “I’ve always felt like societies can’t make good decisions about the present if they don’t have accurate information about the past, and the history of sex work, and sex work generally, there’s so much disinformation about it,” she says. She shared bite-sized lesson, and “it really took off, it was amazing.”
But because of the content that she was sharing, the classrooms started to get policed by the algorithm platforms, like it was a “prostitution” account. Instagram shut down her classroom. Although she managed to put it up again and find ways to avoid the algorithm[ic] policing, “it was that front row seat to being on the wrong side of algorithmic tools that made me really push myself into asking more questions,” says Dr. Bertram.
…’there’s a rapidly growing public sense of unease around AI generally and the lack of honesty and industry transparency about these tools and their potential impact and risks,” says Dr. Bertram. “We could absolutely have secure, high-quality AI tools that save time, advance research and education, and help people live longer, healthier, happier lives, but this is not what is actually happening right now.
Many AI companies expect us to pay for AI tools with things that are way too valuable: our privacy, our kids mental health and quality of education, our rights to our work and intellectual property, and even potentially our personal and national security. It’s time to make AI that works for people and not the other way around.’”
with Sparrow McGovern, “The King and AI.” University Affairs, 11 February, 2026. https://universityaffairs.ca/features/the-king-and-ai/
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