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What does AI mean for the future of the humanities?


October 10, 2024 | Ruby Wang

Robert Newman, Rishi Jaitly, and Thomas Hofweber (FFP ’15, ’25) in conversation with Nithya Ruff in the session “Digital Humanities and AI.”
Nithya Ruff, Robert Newman, Thomas Hofweber (FFP ’15, ’25) and Rishi Jaitly.

On September 21, Robert Newman, Rishi Jaitly, and Thomas Hofweber (FFP ’15, ’25) spoke in conversation with Nithya Ruff in the session “Digital Humanities and AI.” Institute for the Arts and Humanities Director Patricia Parker introduced the panel as a part of the Jaipur Literature Festival North Carolina, which was co-sponsored by the Institute.  

Each speaker drew from their diverse expertise to offer insights on how artificial intelligence will change the landscape of digital humanities. Hofweber, a professor in the philosophy department, regularly teaches “AI and the Future of Humanity,” which concerns large scale questions about AI and its relation to humanity. During the discussion, he offered similar considerations of how AI offers a new way to interrogate humanity: “It’s a great opportunity to make progress in some of the longstanding, unresolved questions that the humanities has tried to answer.”  

“So far, the contrastive study of humanity has mainly been with non-human species,” but while animals evolved biologically like humans, they lack aspects like music or art. Hofweber explained how “now, we have the opportunity to study the human condition by studying a completely alien form of intelligence and contrast humanities with that form of intelligence.”  

Thomas Hofweber
Thomas Hofweber (FFP ’15, ’25)

During his upcoming Faculty Fellowship in spring 2025, Hofweber will be working on the project “Are language models rational? Comparing human and artificial intelligence,” which aims to advance the understanding of AI systems. Hofweber will focus particularly on language models such as ChatGPT to compare the distinctions between artificial and human intelligence.  

Rishi Jaitly founded and now leads Virginia Tech’s Institute for Leadership in Technology, which grants the nation’s first executive humanities degree. Additionally, he is invested in growing OpenAI in India. Jaitly hopes to foster a greater intersection between the academic humanities and the technology sector.  

“What I observed in the technology landscape pre-ChatGPT was that the superpower in technology was the ability to introspect, to imagine, to be storytellers, and to listen, whether in developing new products or entering new markets,” explained Jaitly.  

Jaitly identified a current lack of representation in the humanities within the technology landscape. He aims to cultivate new leaders in the tech through a humanities perspective. “A lifelong commitment to the humanities is what has powered technological innovation for decades,” said Jaitly.  

Robert Newman, director of the National Humanities Center, predicted new ways the humanities will expand in academia. In particular, he emphasized the need for humanities scholars to research the impending crises our society faces. He noted that applicants for NHC fellowships have increasingly reflected proposals that “respond to the current crisis of the climate change crisis, immigration, racial issues, border issues, and more.”  

“What we increasingly find is that these are not one-dimensional solutions. They are multidisciplinary solutions that require a humanities perspective,” said Newman. “I feel that university departments in a couple of decades will be built around these kinds of issues. We will have departments of border studies, climate crisis, cognitive science, etc. Scatterings of people from previous departments and disciplines to have conversations with humanities perspectives.”  

Scholars at UNC-Chapel Hill are already committed to addressing complex issues through a multidisciplinary lens. HHIVE at UNC is interrogating aging beyond a merely biomedical lens. The University Commission on History, Race, and a Way Forward initiates institutional action by combining history, critical race studies, and communications. And now, UNC scholars like Hofweber are figuring out how AI systems will shape what it means to be a human.  

The Jaipur Literature Festival, held annually in Jaipur, India, travels across countries and continents with a caravan of writers, thinkers, poets, influencers, balladeers and raconteurs. Produced by Teamwork Arts, the festival also coordinates international editions; the 2024 JLF North Carolina was the first for the state.   


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