The case for humanities-based studies of AI production and effects

Abstract The current article identifies the underlying themes in the budding discourse on the development of humanities-based research of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI). Three core themes, elicited from emerging voices in various humanistic disciplines, are summarized and consolidated as common grounds for approaching GAI production and effects as a principal object of humanistic inquiry: GAI’s human-like textual and semiotic outputs, deeply entangled as they are in the conceptual world of the humanities; the autonomous nature of GAI intellectual production; and the pervasive implications of GAI for human life, on both individual and collective levels. Grounded in the cross-disciplinary humanistic traditions of epistemological cautiousness about the possibility and necessity of pursuing internal reasoning and intentionality, these core themes serve as key conditions that situate today’s GAI squarely within the intellectual domain and reach of the various fields of the humanities. The article suggests that this research potential remains unfulfilled, as most of the work on GAI production is quantitative or computational and done outside the humanities, in the computer sciences, tech industry, or experimental social sciences. It is proposed that the study of GAI may gain from filling this lacuna, as the epistemologies and methodological tools of the humanities differ from and are complementary to these main trends of GAI research today. Finally, some typological observations on existing contributions are offered, showing how GAI lies at the heart of, and serves to accentuate, the contrast between deep-seated opposing positions across humanistic disciplines.