Will AI Impact Literary Education? East China Normal University Scholars Propose Three Response Paths

Now that AI can already look up information, write papers, and even write decent novels, how should literary education be carried out? Recently, the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at East China Normal University, the editorial office of the journal Modern Chinese Literature, and the research group "People's Literature and Art and the Historical Experience of 20th-Century Chinese Literature" jointly held a seminar titled "Literary Education in the AI Era." Whether it was how to create and how to read in the AI era, or how to find opportunities amid challenges, the participants broadly held three views. One camp believed that AI has already replaced the function of literary education, that the disciplinary classification of Chinese departments was originally a product of industrialization, and that literary education should return to its original purpose—nourishing the soul rather than serving as an academic program. One camp believed that since AI has brought many new directions, literary education should change accordingly, for example through multimodality. The third camp believed that literature is the study of humanity; AI's strength lies in summarizing patterns, but differentiated content—the delicacy and fragility of carbon-based life, the preciousness of life, and experiences including the criticism brought by a sense of justice and the emotion brought by kindness—remains the patent of being human, and therefore literature may be the last private plot.