EVENTS

This week's GlobeColloquium explores how artificial intelligence challenges the humanities’ ways of knowing—now and in the near future. PD Dr. Rico Hauswald traces the self-understanding of the humanities and maps phases of AI integration, from assistive tools to increasingly autonomous agents. What does this mean for knowledge production, epistemic authority, and the societal role of the humanities and the sciences? The session is chaired by Marian Burchardt.

This talk explores the epistemic challenges that artificial intelligence poses to the humanities today and in the future. It situates these challenges within the broader intellectual history of reflections on the nature of the humanities as a distinct mode of inquiry, in contrast to both the natural and the social sciences. By developing a typology of different phases of AI integration – ranging from simple AI tools to fully autonomous, independent AI researchers – and relating them to conceptions of the stages of academic inquiry, the talk examines how the production of knowledge in the humanities and the sciences is being transformed. Finally, it discusses the broader implications of these transformations for their societal role and addresses the resulting challenges, from shifting epistemic authority to the potential existential risks posed by increasingly autonomous AI agents.

Rico Hauswald is a scholar of philosophy interested in social epistemology and the philosophy of science and technology, among others. For the last three years he has been PI of the project »VUKIM – Dealing responsibly with AI-assisted systems in medicine – SP-E Epistemological aspects«, funded by the BMBF. His habilitation thesis on “Epistemic Authorities: Individual and Plural” was published in 2024. Hauswald currently holds the position of Interim Professor for Theoretical Philosophy at TU Dresden.

Institutions

• Universität Leipzig