Abstract: AI, for humanities disciplines, should neither be merely an object of study nor simply a tool for writing assistance. It should become an intellectual partner capable of challenging, critiquing, and reshaping the ways humanities scholars think and work.


Myths are not merely fanciful products of ancient societies—they once served the essential functions of explaining the world, constructing order, and providing meaning. When reason and science proved insufficient to address ultimate questions, myths offered a framework for understanding reality.

In the current era of rapidly advancing generative AI, myth as a framework appears to be supplanted by technological rationality. Algorithms intervene in language, emotion, and decision-making through modeling and inference, continuously compressing the world into computable structures. The "disenchantment" characteristic of modern society finds its fuller realization in AI technology: uncertainty is reduced, meaning is formalized, and experience is datafied.

However, some argue that this is an era of greater uncertainty—a "risk society"—where "disenchantment" is followed by "re-enchantment." So, does this age truly signify the end of myths?

The operational mechanisms of generative AI are not fully transparent; its judgments often demonstrate high efficacy yet remain difficult to clearly explain. This characteristic of being "effective but unknowable" imbues technology with a new form of authority. In this sense, humanity faces not traditional deities, but a systemic structure of its own creation that has increasingly externalized into an objective force.

Meanwhile, expectations of "omniscient computing power," reliance on technological judgment, and discussions of consciousness storage, memory extension, and even "digital immortality" are revisiting the core questions that myths once addressed: omniscience, creation, destiny, and eternity.

This essay competition invites authors to explore the following questions (but not limited to):

  • In a highly algorithmicized society, are myths returning in new forms?
  • Is generative AI a dissolution of meaning, or a production of meaning via new narrative structures?
  • Does the "black box" nature of technological systems constitute a new dimension of myth in modern society?
  • When reason and computation are pushed to their limits, do aspects of human experience keep themselves from being formalized?
  • ......

This competition invites scholars worldwide to treat AI as an academic partner and explore these fundamental questions through deep human-AI collaboration.