Research

As artificial intelligence takes part in producing knowledge, exercising judgment, and creating, many of the assumptions through which we understand the world and order our lives call for renewed examination. What constitutes understanding? How is knowledge established? Where does human value lie? These questions give science and the humanities an increasingly immediate set of shared concerns.

Research at Fangtang Institute, Tsinghua University, follows two directions: philosophy and the humanities in the age of AI, and a future-oriented meta-theory of original innovation. The first examines the human condition amid technological change; the second investigates the conditions in which original thought can emerge. The two are closely connected: as AI changes the practice of scientific discovery, it also prompts us to ask what intellectual capacities are needed to formulate questions, develop concepts, and arrive at original judgments.

Philosophy and Humanities in the Age of AI

Faced with the new phenomena that AI brings, philosophy must first clarify the questions at stake. How far do our existing concepts of intelligence, consciousness, understanding, and subjectivity still hold? Can human experience adequately account for the capacities and behaviour of machines? Beginning with foundational questions in AI ethics, Fangtang examines the limits of inherited concepts and methods, seeking more precise ways to describe and understand these phenomena.

These inquiries are inseparable from lived experience. As machines undertake more work and creative activity, how do people understand their own worth? As AI enters the acquisition of knowledge and the sphere of intimate relationships, how might the foundations of trust, authority, and shared life change? Our research extends from questions of meaning and purpose to the reorganisation of labour, distribution, and power, examining possible forms of social order in which humans and AI coexist. Philosophy, the humanities, and technical research meet around these concrete problems to examine both what is changing and what those changes mean.

A Meta-Theory of Original Innovation for the Future

The challenge of original innovation, raised by the Needham Question and Qian Xuesen’s Question, has long concerned scientific and educational practice in China. Decades of experimentation now offer a basis for renewed philosophical inquiry: How does scientific thinking develop? How are important questions recognised? How can a new concept open previously unforeseen possibilities for research? The emergence of approaches such as AI for Science gives these questions about the intellectual conditions of innovation renewed practical significance.

Grounded in scientific and educational practice in China, Fangtang brings scientists, educators, and philosophers into sustained dialogue and collaborative inquiry, drawing from concrete experience to formulate philosophical questions that warrant continued investigation. Through the Fangtang-Qingquan dialogue series and research on the power of concepts, the study of questions, and human spiritual dynamics, we examine how concepts and reasoning, the capacity to formulate questions, aesthetic judgment, and inner motivation contribute to innovation. This work seeks intellectual resources capable of supporting original breakthroughs.