Laurent Dubreuil: Humanities in the Time of AI

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.