Humanities in the Time of AI

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Laurent Dubreuil

If humanistic research consists of the generation of consensus positions, simple expression, summarized texts, or passable translations, then we have arrived at the place where AI is able to accomplish these different missions to a convincing degree. However, Laurent Dubreuil argues, such tasks do not, in any way, constitute the humanities. On the contrary, he posits, a maximalist take on scholarship would not focus on generation but on creation, as a subject and as an object. Dubreuil seizes the opportunity of what AI reveals about the meaning of humanistic inquiry to offer a path for the renewal of the humanities on transhistorical, transcultural, and transdisciplinary grounds.

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Background photo from Pexels courtesy of Google DeepMind; image produced by Khyati Trehan.

Metadata

  • isbn
    978-1-4529-7311-1
  • issn
    2373-5074
  • publisher
    University of Minnesota Press
  • publisher place
    Minneapolis, MN
  • restrictions
    Please see the Creative Commons website for details about the restrictions associated with the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
  • rights
    The author previously published portions of this book as “Metal Machine Music,” Harper’s Magazine, July 2024.

    Humanities in the Time of AI by Laurent Dubreuil is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
  • rights holder
    Laurent Dubreuil
  • series number
    77
  • series title
  • doi