Call for Short Provocations for Roundtable: EASA 2024

Deadline for submissions: 22 January 2024

Submission link: https://easaonline.org/conferences/easa2024/programme#14499

Short Abstract:
Artificial intelligence is undergoing such an explosive development that Silicon Valley pundits have described it as the “Oppenheimer Moment”. This roundtable will ask how AI is doing and undoing anthropology as we grapple with technological development of monumental reach and ferocity.

Long Abstract:
Artificial intelligence is undergoing such an explosive development that Silicon Valley pundits have adopted the term “Oppenheimer Moment” to capture the gravity of the current moment. Large language models such as ChatGPT are becoming a key source of text writing and learning. Implant technology is prepped to realize a dream of merging biological and machine intelligence. AI is mastering hyper-personalized skills in the field of intimate relations, whether as elderly care, dating, or recruitment for political ideologies. These issues are of far-reaching and even apocalyptic dimension that Oppenheimer also went through, except he knew what the end result was of the product he was leading.

Philosopher David Chalmers (2022) has suggested that AI products are part of a system of zombies: outwardly, they behave like a conscious human being but inwardly they have no conscious experience or feelings. This captivating formulation triggers distinct lines of exploration for anthropologists. First, how might anthropology of ethics bear on these novel “zombie” systems (Das 2012; Fassin 2015; Hervik 2018)? Second, “zombies” should not obscure material-colonial conditions of labour and data extraction as well as epistemic practices of category building and labelling that lie at the root of AI development (Udupa, Maronikolakis & Wisiorek 2023). Finally, what is the role of experientially grounded, reflexive research which forms the core of anthropological knowledge? This roundtable will take up mega questions on these three scales of inquiry, asking how AI is doing and undoing anthropology as we grapple with technological development of monumental reach and ferocity.

Convenors:
Peter Hervik, Network of Independent Scholars in Education, Copenhagen

Sahana Udupa, LMU Munich