Anthea CHEUNG, Yanwen HOU & Yurong MA. 2024. Generative AI and Critical Pedagogy: Towards a Developed Methodology for Zhuangzi Studies in the Age of Algorithms. PDF
Recent developments in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have ushered in new research possibilities across nearly all disciplines, with varying degrees of effectiveness. This paper offers a test case in the use of AI in the humanities, a field traditionally rooted in qualitative analysis. The influential Daoist classic Zhuangzi has been chosen due to its unique and subtle notion of wuwei (non-action). Leading AI-aided databases such as Semantic Scholar, Elict, and Scite, have been applied by the authors to the vast amount of literature in the Zhuangzi study. The literature can be sifted through rapidly, and key points of relevant research papers highlighted, analyzed, and even summarized, offering an increasingly streamlined and efficient approach to literature review and data curation. This is useful to both graduate and post-graduate students. However, in our study the algorithm-driven nature of these platforms sometimes overlooked and even misinterpreted the nuances of philosophical discourse regarding wuwei as found in the Zhuangzi. This is reflected in the contextual intricacies surrounding the text’s political philosophy. According to the primitivist view of the Zhuangzi, the most salient feature of the polity of wuwei is not to be found in the paragraphs that address the term itself directly, but in the narrative of the illuminating or illustrious king (mingwang) in pursuit of a finely-tuned state of harmonious governance. Such subtleties were not brought out by the AI tools applied in this study. In view of this, a methodology capable of incorporating conventional Zhuangzi scholarship with textual analysis, historical understanding, and philosophical excursion continues to be necessary. That is to say, the primacy of human intelligence cannot be dispensed with in the field of fine research in the AI era, especially for conventional philosophical topics of this kind.
Keywords
AI, digital humanities, Zhuangzi study, literature search, literature review, textual analysis
AWCT 2024