Today, major tech companies around the world are engaged in an arms race over AI products, releasing new iterations of their generative AI tools every few months. A few months ago, China’s Deepseek caused a brief panic in Silicon Valley and Washington by achieving performance close to ChatGPT at a significantly lower cost—this only intensified the competition. Now, ChatGPT, Grok, Gemini, and Llama have once again left Deepseek behind in terms of performance.
No company wants to be left behind, and most users are eagerly awaiting further technological progress. The European Union has tried to position itself as the global regulator of AI technologies, but this has drawn criticism from tech enthusiasts and U.S. politicians, who argue that heavy-handed regulation will stifle innovation. If the EU is the policy regulator of the global industrial chain, then the global humanities, arts, and social sciences (HASS) community plays the role of intellectual regulator. Yet, at present, most scholars in the humanities are also eagerly keeping pace with AI developments, attempting to leverage AI in their academic research.
Of course, I count myself among the eager followers. Shortly after ChatGPT launched, I penned a trendy piece on how to use ChatGPT to enhance interpersonal communication. Today, I use various AIs intensely on a daily basis, mostly to deal with practical issues in life rather than academic ones. But I am not without concerns. Nowadays, it seems rare to hear scholars in the humanities express concerns about AI—perhaps because they lack a technical understanding and feel unqualified to make informed critiques, or perhaps their voices are drowned out by the overwhelming tide of techno-optimism.
Next, I will present my concerns and criticisms about the latest AI technologies—especially generative AI. I argue that the rise of artificial intelligence will be accompanied by a great stagnation of the human spirit, including humanity’s intellectual and artistic achievements. I call this theory the “Great Stagnation Theory.” I don’t necessarily believe it will come true, but I hope to offer it as a provocation for further thought.
Major Breakthroughs of the Human Spirit Follow a Genius-Centered Model
From antiquity to the present, from Anaxagoras and Confucius to Beethoven, Einstein, and Žižek, major breakthroughs in the human spirit have followed a genius-centered model. I believe this assertion is not particularly controversial.
Geniuses often attract followers—and sometimes betrayers. Freud’s “Secret Committee” was a group of devoted court guards around him, tasked with defending the truth of psychoanalysis and the reputation of their great teacher. However, Freud’s uncompromising stance toward his own doctrine eventually led to the “betrayal” of talented minds—Adler, Jung, and Rank. The remaining disciples were mostly mediocre. Even today, psychoanalysis still has many devoted followers. If we include Jacques Lacan, then most psychoanalysis enthusiasts in China today have no direct academic lineage from either Freud or Lacan.
Generally speaking, the more devout or fundamentalist a follower is, the more mediocre they tend to be.
Some may object by pointing out that modern research in the natural sciences and engineering seems to be the result of collective wisdom rather than individual genius. For example, the very generative AI we’re discussing now appears to be the product of decades of collaborative work by computer scientists rather than the breakthrough of any one genius. This is why I rolled my eyes when some Chinese media recently called Deepseek’s Liang Wenfeng a “genius.”
Thus, natural sciences, engineering, and even parts of the social sciences seem to have transitioned—or are transitioning—from independent to collaborative research. There are no more Einsteins, but we have countless universities, labs, advisors, and graduate students.
I once participated in a discussion where a young social science scholar argued that those of us in the humanities, still conducting independent research, are “behind the times.”
I disagree, though I did not refute him at the time. In the broader humanities—whether philosophy, literature, or the arts—I find it hard to imagine significant achievements being made through collaboration. This was rare in the past, is rare now, and will likely remain rare. Co-authoring a novel is unlikely (though I once attempted such a thing with a friend in middle school), as is co-creating a painting or musical piece on equal terms (such works are almost certainly mediocre), or co-founding a philosophical system. Some collaboration may exist under the direction of one individual, and that can be an exception. Freud’s psychoanalytic movement was such an example—he developed the core theory, while his disciples handled the less critical tasks.
Even then, conflict is possible. I once took a class taught by a philosophy professor who led a project to write a philosophy textbook, with each person contributing a chapter. He told us that the experience made him “question life” and vow never to “join a group project” again. He was right.
AI Cannot Produce Genius-Level or Creative Results
Can AI create a philosophical system like Hegel’s, with dozens of volumes worth reading line by line? Can it write literature on par with Dostoevsky or Milan Kundera? Can it formulate a system like Freud’s psychoanalysis? Can it produce a physics theory like Einstein’s? Can it paint like Raphael? I’m not asking about imitation—I mean the creation of entirely new works or paradigms in similar styles.
I’m not an AI expert, so I can’t answer in technical depth, but I believe the answer is fairly clear: no.
More precisely, as of today, it cannot. If it could, we would already see countless genius-level works. While we do see many interesting and insightful things, we haven’t seen anything of that caliber. AI has not yet delivered major breakthroughs of the human spirit.
From my experience, today’s generative AI is essentially a recombination of existing information. While genius also builds on existing work, it makes astonishing leaps beyond it. AI cannot make such leaps—no matter how sophisticated the prompts. I once asked ChatGPT to create a theory as creative as Freud’s psychological model. It responded with a poor imitation of the “id-ego-superego” framework. I also regularly ask it to generate feature images for my articles—it always churns out formulaic results.
So here’s a fascinating question: what is it in the human brain that enables true creativity? Whatever it is, current AI doesn’t have it.
In addition to being recombinative by nature, AI is especially cautious. It emphasizes balance and avoids one-sidedness. Yet Freud’s libido theory, Hegel’s absolute idealism, and Schopenhauer’s will-to-live are all, in some sense, extremely one-sided. And it is precisely this one-sidedness that leads to greatness—whereas excessive balance often leads to mediocrity.
Humanity’s Overdependence on an Inherently Uncreative AI
In recent years, generative AI has dealt significant blows to the human spirit, and humanity has reacted in a state of panic. Recently, Fudan University drastically cut its humanities faculty and students, while aggressively expanding so-called “innovative engineering” programs—an overreaction to this shock. Many Chinese universities are promoting AI literacy, often mandatorily or semi-mandatorily. This is strange, considering even top U.S. tech schools haven’t made such extreme moves.
Some humanities scholars have published a flurry of papers—but most are about “how to better use AI,” not critical reflections on AI itself. There’s a growing sentiment that those who don’t learn AI will be left behind.
This widespread promotion and adoption is almost certain to result in overreliance. Look at social media and smartphones—many people think they’re using them in healthy, moderate ways, but they’re actually addicted without realizing it. Microsoft thoughtfully named its chatbot “Copilot,” suggesting it’s just a co-pilot—but humans may still end up overly dependent on their co-pilots.
Previously, people relied on search engines and databases—they were passive tools requiring active human thought to organize information into coherent ideas. Now, relying on AI means outsourcing the thinking process itself, saving mental effort—but at the cost of creativity.
Many people believe AI can serve as their research assistant while they remain the researcher. It’s like having a reliable grad student to help out. But gradually, that grad student starts coming up with ideas and writing the papers. Initially, AI is supplementary; eventually, it becomes central.
As we discussed earlier, AI is inherently uncreative. So if AI takes on the main role and humans use it unreflectively, then their work too will be uncreative.
The Worsening Shortage of Genius
For many reasons, the 21st century is already an impoverished one—we lack geniuses. The business world might be an exception. In the natural sciences, engineering, and humanities, there are fewer geniuses than in previous eras. In science and engineering, people explain this with the shift to collaborative research. But in the humanities, this excuse doesn’t hold.
Geniuses are those with exceptional creativity. The shortage of genius means fewer individuals with such gifts. As mentioned, breakthroughs in human thought have historically followed a genius-centered model. This is not to deny the contributions of ordinary people—rather, it points to a different division of labor. Ordinary people often follow, interpret, and popularize the work of geniuses. When we discuss great names, we are serving this role.
This is still true today in the humanities. People still talk about the great names—most of whom are long dead. This suggests that today’s era finds it hard to produce major intellectual breakthroughs because we lack those capable of making them.
AI, by its nature, recombines existing information. At best, it imitates—it cannot truly create. Yet future humans will heavily rely on AI. This may cause human thinking to converge with AI’s logic, further worsening the shortage of genius and the overall decline of creativity.
As AI becomes embedded in education, even children will start interacting with it from a young age. Will they develop a worldview completely different from ours? Just as Gen Z or the post-2000 generation is largely addicted to social media, future generations may become addicted to AI. And since AI is inherently uncreative, the seeds of their creativity may never germinate.
Thus, AI will not only exacerbate the scarcity of genius but also lead to a general decline in human creativity. And the result is:
The Great Stagnation of the Human Spirit
The Great Stagnation does not mean absolute stagnation—it means the inability to achieve major breakthroughs. Creation and publication will continue, but without significant progress. Signs of stagnation are already present in our time—most of the great individuals are gone, and only they could have made breakthroughs. Going forward, AI’s deep intervention in life gives us no reason to expect improvement—only deterioration. This is not something that EU-style regulation can fix.
The collective intelligence model of collaborative research in science, engineering, and some social sciences can still drive progress—but it cannot compare to the breakthrough model of geniuses like Newton, Darwin, or Einstein. Collective intelligence offers breadth; genius offers depth. The problem is: when there is genius, you get both breadth and depth. Without genius, you only get breadth—and no depth. After all, there’s never a shortage of ordinary people.
In my previous article, How to Escape the Age of Mediocrity: Create a Whole New Set of Institutions for Education, Art, and Science, I argued that educational institutions oppose genius and creativity—regardless of their empty rhetoric about innovation. Fudan University’s reform only takes this anti-creative trajectory further. When an educational institution embraces AI, encourages students to rely on it, and fundamentally does not encourage creativity, then it’s not much different from embracing mediocrity. In other words, not only has humanity failed to realize the crisis AI poses to creativity—we’ve actually made it worse ourselves.
This is my prediction.
On a collective level, the situation may improve if AI ever evolves into Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)—perhaps then AI will become truly creative. But is that even possible?
On an individual level, I urge people to preserve their subjectivity, autonomy, and creativity while using AI. Don’t over-rely on it. Don’t let it drown out your inner world. Otherwise, you’ll become like AI—just a reassembler of existing information. And you definitely won’t do it as well as AI does.
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