In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have rapidly begun undertaking many tasks that were once the exclusive domain of humans. Through AI-generated content, these technologies increasingly permeate production, everyday life, education, research, and other fields. In an era that prioritizes immediate application and efficiency, the humanities are at times called into question for their “low output” or even dismissed as “useless.” Consequently, many universities around the world have reduced humanities enrollment or restructured related programs, creating the impression that the humanities are facing a crisis. This situation raises a provocative question: When everything can be modeled by algorithms and quantified with data, what forms of knowledge and value can the humanities still offer for the future?

The core of the issue lies not in the power of technology itself, but in its potential to operate independently of human values and ethics. Technological advancement depends on the continuous optimization of engineering capabilities and algorithms, as well as sustained reflection on value, ethics, and meaning. This is particularly true in domains that cannot be fully quantified—such as human nature, judgment, and responsibility—where the accumulated knowledge and intellectual resources of the humanities play an irreplaceable role.

AI algorithms rely on data that can be collected and quantified, and the “logic of immediately effective knowledge” they encourage may, in the short term, encroach on the intellectual space of the humanities—disciplines defined by reflection and historical depth. Yet technology requires theoretical grounding, and society requires ethical constraints. Long-term development in the AI era must take into account users’ historical backgrounds, cultural contexts, and individual differences, while exploring the human values concealed within vast datasets. For this reason, the involvement of the humanities is more necessary than ever: They help establish ethical and value-based standards between humans and technology, while safeguarding civilizational diversity and cultural foundations within the general algorithmic logic of technological systems. AI excels at identifying, retrieving, and integrating existing information in order to answer predefined questions, yet the human world of ideas and spiritual experience extends far beyond what algorithms can quantify or comprehend. The humanities, by contrast, probe deeply into the human spirit and emotional condition, examining belief systems and normative values that algorithms have yet to capture or model.

In the AI era, the value of the humanities becomes even more evident, particularly in their capacity to deepen the ethical implications of civilizational transmission and broaden its cultural scope. Although AI-generated content offers remarkable efficiency and scale to knowledge production, it reveals clear limitations when confronted with complex issues such as diverse value systems, ideological contestation, and the discernment between true and false knowledge. The core capacities cultivated by the humanities—understanding belief systems, empathizing with others, engaging in self-reflection, and discerning truth—precisely compensate for what might be called the absence of a “humanity algorithm” in AI. In the process of civilizational exchange and mutual learning, the humanities will continue to provide axiological norms and cultural support for global dialogue and governance. In practical terms, this role is reflected in several emerging developments: The construction of global corpora enables more systematic cross-civilizational comparative studies; the widespread development of digital archives facilitates the preservation and dissemination of rare texts; and deeper interdisciplinary collaboration extends the foundational theories of the humanities into emerging fields such as AI ethics and digital governance, thereby contributing to the formation of technical standards and ethical principles.

The humanities also play a unique role in addressing the complex social issues of the contemporary world. Technology is reshaping social structures, power relations, and individual self-perception. As profound global transformations unseen in a century accelerate, structural shifts in society and major adjustments in the global order are unfolding simultaneously, disrupting established societal logic and value systems while rendering various social issues unprecedentedly complex and uncertain. In such conditions of uncertainty, the ability to grasp complexity and to understand the present from both historical and future-oriented perspectives becomes especially vital.

The intellectual resources and frameworks of judgment provided by the humanities not only supply the intellectual foundations required for technological innovation and social transformation, but also cultivate talent equipped with cross-cultural understanding, ethical discernment, and a sense of public responsibility, thereby preserving irreplaceable intellectual capital for the future. At a deeper level, the humanities examine technology within the context of civilizational development and offer frameworks for judgment amid conflicts of value. Grounded in ethics, history, culture, and aesthetics, they preserve and interpret knowledge often dismissed as “useless”—knowledge that, at critical moments, may determine whether complex social issues can truly be resolved.

Wang Fengli is a research fellow from the Social Science Information Center at the Hebei Academy of Social Sciences.