Abstract:

[Objective] The development of artificial intelligence is bringing structural impact and revolutionary opportunities to social science research. It has certain theoretical and practical significance to clarify the key characteristics and laws of the development of interdisciplinary integration. [Methods] Based on the Chinese CNKI database, this paper uses the CiteSpace scientometric tool to display the overall characteristics of the research literature on “artificial intelligence + social sciences” from 1992 to 2022 by visually analyzing their developing trend, evolution process, and frontier hotspots. [Results] According to the current domestic research status of “artificial intelligence + social sciences”, the overall trend is waves and fluctuations in part while continuous growth in total. The research level is strongly driven by technology, and interdisciplinary research forms a “two-strong and multi-faceted” pattern. Small-scale academic circles are gradually formed, but compound high-yield scholars are still scarce. The research frontier is gradually transforming from hot topics such as robotics, computer vision, and knowledge engineering to topics like intelligent age, algorithmic governance, and digital economy. [Conclusions] The development of artificial intelligence not only leads to paradigm shifts and changes in the scope of social sciences research, but also strengthens human being’s observation ability of multi-perspectives, omni-directions, and all-fields, to improve the interpretation and prediction accuracy of social sciences. Moreover, this article attempts to provide a useful reference for all sectors of society to jointly promote the disciplinary development of artificial intelligence and social sciences.

Key words: artificial intelligence, social sciences, discipline development, visual bibliometrics