Twenty-first International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

This study evaluates how ChatGPT contributes to the understanding and global popularization of literature. Is it disruptive technology or panacea? First, ChatGPT is evaluated in terms of disruptive technology. Disruptive technology means a new business model that can attract an underserviced market and grows until it supplants incumbent competitors. ChatGPT’s ability to help users to understand, or even to access, literature will be explored. It reaches a far wider market than literary publications can ever aspire to. Launched only on November 30th, 2022, ChatGPT, a chatbot developed by OpenAI, is estimated to have reached 100 million monthly active users in January 2023. It is different from websites as it provides contextual information and interpretations of specific chunks of texts. The authenticity and authority of such interpretation need to be tackled carefully. In particular, its ability to ghost write by mimicking the style of writers by artificial intelligence needs to be assessed. Second, the ability of ChatGPT to provide new directions in the humanities especially in regard to literature will be examined. ChatGPT is trained by information drawn from the whole internet. Such closeness to the real reader yields innovative suggestions for the popularization of literature, especially in the global context. These new possibilities are explored to find out how readership can be expanded for literature, especially canonical texts. ChatGPT can provide plausible solutions customized for individual locations around the world. The viability these solutions generated by artificial intelligence is evaluated.