Using GenAI to think critically about grading in a Cultural Anthropology class
In 2019, my friend and colleague Grant Otsuki started experimenting with Generative AI (GenAI) – GPT-2 by OpenAI – to see how well it did at writing an…
Tag: Artificial Intelligence
The Evolution of the Digital Divide: New Dimensions of Digital Inequality
This text explores the evolution of digital inequality, highlighting how emerging phenomena pose new challenges to digital inclusion, particularly with the incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI…
Cards and Codes: Spirituality and Magic in the (Bio)technological Era
This is not a scientific or technological project, but perhaps it is a project about science and technology. My proposal is to create a magical tool, a tarot…
Designing Tech That (Finally) Respects Our Time & Humanity | Announcing The Calm Tech Institute
I’m very excited to announce the launch of the Calm Tech Institute, a new design organization creating standards for technology which respect our time, attention, and humanity. Our…
The Brilliant Future of AI
On a hot August afternoon in 2018, I attended a public lecture on AI and the future of work, broadly defined. Back then, I was a student in…
Lonely Planet Looking for Connection: Citizen Science SETI Research at NASA
NASA’s homepage is as glitzy as you would expect of the U.S. Government’s sexiest administration. Glossy pictures of nebulas, astronauts, and asteroids float across the top of the…
Adventures in chatGPT #3: Jack Kerouac Edition
When I first heard about chatGPT, the main thing I was concerned about, like many others, was that students would use it instead of writing their own work.…
On Algorithmic Divination
Scientist operating an algorithmic divination machine as imagined by Midjourney’s AI (image by Author & Midjourney). Algorithms are tools of divination.[1] Like cowry shells, scapular bones,…
AI as a Feminist Issue
By choosing to look at the funding from the American Government on this field, I aim to tell a different story about AI. A quick search for the…
Platypod, Episode Seven: An Anthropology of Data, AI, and Much More
Download the transcript of this interview. For this episode of Platypod, I talked to Dr. Tanja Ahlin about her research, work, and academic trajectory. She’s currently a postdoctoral…
Worried about the impact of AI? SAR was ahead of the curve.
[Featured image courtesy of Mike MacKenzie, https://www.vpnsrus.com/, and Wikimedia Commons] Various SAR members have suggested that SAR bring to Santa Fe an expert to talk about the possibilities…
Adventures in chatGPT #2: A conversation with Nick Seaver
After writing my last post about chatGPT, I got in touch with Nick Seaver to see what he had to say about some of these issues. Here’s our conversation:…
Adventures in chatGPT: Meet David Wilkie, anthropologist
So curiosity finally got the best of me and I started looking into this whole chatGPT thing that is poised to bring about the ruin of society. I…
If I Could Talk to the Algorithm
In the film Doctor Dolittle (1967), the title character yearns to “Talk to the Animals,” as the song goes, to understand their mysterious and often vexing ways. It…
People Are Not Fixed Media
This browser does not support HTML5 audio Listen to an audio recording of this post as read by Ritwik Banerji Sensory ethnography continually emphasizes …
Mapping Algorithmic Assumptions: Reflections from a Society for Psychological Anthropology roundtable by Alexa Hagerty
Fritz Kahn, Der Mensch als Industriepalast, 1926. Detail. Image in public domain Introduction: surveil, classify and predict by Alexa Hagerty and Livia Garofalo The works distilled by the…
Human as the Ultimate Authority in Control
Illustration of algorithmically simulated flocking behavior (2021, created by Anna Lukina) With the growing size of historical data available to researchers and industrial practitioners, developing al…
Dialogues on Artificial Intelligence
In December 2020, a group of social scientists gathered virtually at the LSE Department of Anthropology to discuss the relationship between data science and the social sciences. We…
Der ‚Roboter‘ wird 100. Über eine (nicht nur) literarische Utopie
Vor hundert Jahren erfand Karel Čapek für sein Theaterstück „R.U.R.“ das Wort „Roboter“. Ist die damalige Reflexion zum Verhältnis zwischen Mensch, Umwelt und künstlicher Intelligenz noch aktuell?
The Body Audible: From Vocal Biomarkers to a Phrenology of the Throat by Beth Semel
How do mental illnesses sound? What are the stakes of using machines to render the signs of psychiatric suffering audible? These questions drive the teams of psychiatric and…
Me, My Data and OK Google
Photo by @charlesdeluvio A genderless gendered listening device in a ‘modern’ Norwegian home Introduction In this essay I will explore a conversation that I had with Google Home…
‘Dynamic Totalities’: Data Surveillance as a Paradigm
In the zeitgeist of academia, surveillance has clearly an ominous connotation. However, is surveillance not fundamentally a way of looking? More formally, a way of looking at totalities.…
MacHack VI: Computer chess and the roots of AI
On January 21, 1967, a mild winter Saturday in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a couple of computer researchers from the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology…
Is Artificial Intelligence Magic?
Artificial intelligence can perform feats that seem like sorcery. AI can drive cars and fly drones. It can compose original music, write poetry that isn’t too awful, and…