We are pleased to announce that Professor Ben Van Overmeire of Duke Kunshan University and Ruixiang Hu have been awarded the Grand Prize in the inaugural Fangtang Human-AI Collaboration Global Essay Competition (AI for Humanities) for their co-authored essay, “The Hat Has Changed, but the People Haven’t: The Persistence of Mythology in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.”
Organized by the Tsinghua Fangtang Research Institute, the competition attracted more than 500 participants and received 373 valid submissions. Following four rounds of anonymous review, five essays were selected to share the Grand Prize, including two in English and three in Chinese. The award ceremony will be held at Tsinghua University in late October.
The award-winning essay explores whether mythic thought disappears as science and technology advance. The authors argue that mythology does not simply vanish in the modern world. Instead, mythic content can take new forms within changing cultural, technological, and intellectual frameworks.
Through three case studies, the essay examines the transformation of Buddhist cosmology, the emergence of AI-related mythologies in science fiction, and the technological Singularity as a contemporary form of eschatological thought.
The essay concludes by proposing “algorithmic mythology” as a direction for future research, asking what happens when technologies themselves begin to participate in generating myths.This recognition highlights the important role of the humanities in engaging with new questions brought about by artificial intelligence and technological change.
Congratulations to Professor Ben Van Overmeire and Ruixiang Hu on this achievement!
