Are Print Books the New (Old) Authority?

I’ve started pondering to what degree we’ll return to printed books, bookstores, and libraries in the face of inane and inaccurate AI-generated material flooding Amazon and the Internet.

I don’t find it an entirely bad thing that we do, but I’m also in the business of creating professional historical scholarship, educational resources, and public history on the web. I don’t know yet, it’s just a thought occurring lately and how I (and we, as a profession) might respond to this.

Another option is that we finally begin to settle on how we verify and peer review online scholarship. It’s a topic I’ve mused on for a long time, and we still haven’t found a great solution to. Perhaps this will light some urgency to the question.