The Fangtang AI4H Global Essay Competition was an academic experiment in AI for Humanities. Its concern was not whether AI could write in place of people, but how humanities research might reorganize itself when AI enters the work of asking, arguing, and reflecting.
In 2026, the project invited Chinese- and English-language submissions from individuals and teams across disciplines under the question, “Will There Still Be Myths in the Age of AI?” This edition has concluded; this page preserves its central questions and methodological approach.
Rethinking meaning
Myths once explained the world, established order, and made meaning inhabitable. As algorithms enter language, emotion, and decision-making, the opacity of technical systems, expectations of omniscient computing, and debates on memory extension return questions of omniscience, creation, destiny, and eternity to view.
The project asked whether generative AI dissolves meaning or creates new narrative structures, and whether human experience retains elements that cannot be formalized when reason and computation are pushed to their limits.
Placing AI within research
AI4H understood AI as a critical interlocutor, a co-constructor of concepts, and a participant in thought experiments, rather than a ghostwriter. Contributors submitted not only a final article but also pivotal exchanges, methods of collaboration, and reflections; evaluation considered both the work itself and the quality of that collaboration.
The competition leaves an open question: when knowledge production crosses human and artificial systems, how should originality, contribution, and scholarly trust be understood?
Visit the Fangtang AI4H Global Essay Competition website
