Over 400 experts discuss AI role in social sciences at Fudan University

Fudan University in Shanghai held the 2025 Humanities and Social Sciences Intelligence Conference themed "AI-driven theoretical innovation and paradigm shift in humanities and social sciences" on Saturday.

More than 400 experts from domestic politics, business, academic, and media sectors as well as representatives of teachers of students participated in the event.

Focusing on topics, such as AI for social sciences, AI risk identification and intelligent decision-making, AI for constructing and inheriting Chinese civilization origins, and AI ethics and governance, the conference was aimed at exploring theoretical innovation and methodological change in the deep integration of artificial intelligence and philosophy as well as social sciences, promoting the development of the relevant disciplines and social progress.

During the event, a comprehensive report titled "The Future is Here: Blue Book on the Intelligent Development of Humanities and Social Sciences", was published.

This report, a joint effort of 53 scholars, was led by Fudan University and aimed to explore the integration of AI and humanities as well as social sciences, addressing key challenges, theoretical advancements, and technological frontiers.

It pointed out that with the empowerment of AI, humanities and social science research has entered a new paradigm driven by both data and mechanism, which greatly expands the breadth of research objects, the depth of mechanism analysis, and the speed of scientific development.

The release of the report marked a new starting point for academic research in the field of intelligent development of humanities and social sciences in China, and was expected to attract more scholars to focus on the profound integration of AI and humanities and social sciences to accelerate innovation in the field of new humanities, said the university.

Fudan University has been at the forefront of promoting the innovative integration of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and big data, with humanities and social sciences in recent years.

For example, in the realm of digital humanities, by focusing on the areas of archaeology, ancient texts, early classics, and ancient historical geography, the university's efforts of constructing a database of Chinese civilization and a multi-modal, spatiotemporal model about early Chinese civilization was gathering pace. This initiative was intended to trace the development history of early Chinese civilization from the Paleolithic Age to the end of the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24).

In the field of computational social sciences, Fudan University has developed a multi-agent decision-making platform for the "digital intelligence twin" of the intelligent society. This platform is geared towards developing multi-modal large models for use in international politics, public policy, rule of law society, climate governance, and other fields.