The collective use and perceptions of generative AI tools in digital humanities research: Survey-based results

2024-04-18

AI Summary

This study investigates how digital humanities (DH) scholars adopt, apply, and critically evaluate generative artificial intelligence (e.g., ChatGPT), addressing gaps in understanding AI’s epistemic, ethical, and methodological implications within humanistic inquiry. Method: Drawing on a mixed-methods survey of 76 international DH scholars—including structured questionnaires and qualitative thematic coding—we systematically analyze usage patterns, perceived affordances, and critical concerns. Contribution/Results: The study reveals pronounced polarization in scholarly perceptions of generative AI’s value and identifies novel practice paradigms and critical epistemic frameworks distinct from those associated with traditional AI. It documents widespread application across research tasks—including text generation, literature synthesis, and pedagogical support—and constructs the first empirically grounded DH-specific generative AI usage perception map. These findings provide foundational empirical evidence and theoretical scaffolding for examining AI’s socio-technical embedding, ethical tensions, and methodological transformation in the humanities.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Learning Human Values and Preferences
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Artificial General Intelligence
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Trust and reliance of crowd workers and data experts on GenAI
• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence technologies have revolutionized the research landscape, with significant implications for Digital Humanities, a field inherently intertwined with technological progress. This article investigates how DH scholars adopt and critically evaluate generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT in research. Drawing on 76 responses collected from an international survey study, we explored DH scholars' rationale for adopting or not adopting generative AI tools in research, identified the specific practices of using generative AI tools to support various DH research tasks, and analyzed scholars' collective perceptions regarding the benefits, risks, and challenges of using generative AI tools in DH research. The survey results reveal two key findings: first, DH research communities hold divisive opinions about the value of generative AI in DH scholarship; second, scholars have developed new practices and perceptions for using generative AI tools, which differ from those associated with traditional AI-based tools. Our survey represents one of the first survey-based analyses on this topic. It has the potential to serve as a building block for future empirical inquiries into the impact of generative AI on DH scholarship.

Problem

• How DH scholars adopt and evaluate GenAI technologies
• Benefits, risks, and challenges of GenAI in DH research
• Impact of GenAI on intellectual identities in DH

Innovation

• Surveyed DH scholars on GenAI adoption
• Analyzed GenAI benefits, risks, and challenges
• Applied Actor-Network Theory to GenAI impact