NYAS Lecture, April 7th: From Tools to Metahumans: Talking to AI
Abstract
AI and AI-endowed robots are celebrated as useful tools. But the dramatic utopian and dystopian responses they can provoke suggest something far more, as many users probe them for signs of agency, sentience, and intelligence. At this point, AI is no longer just a tool, it can start to resemble something near human. But we have always lived with near humans and super humans, or what Marshall Sahlins called “metahumans.” We call them spirits, ancestors, gods. Ethnographic attention to the interaction brings out the common features of AI and other metahumans. One feature metahumans share is their ties to power. Much as a prophet embodies and legitimates the power of divinity, so AI can mystify and justify to users the power of its corporate masters, endowing mundane profit-seeking with supernatural aura.
When and Where
6:00 -7:00 PM—Join us for dinner ($20 suggested, free for students)
7:00 – 8:30 PM—Presentation and Q&A
RSVP by Monday, March 3 at 10:00 am.
New York Academy of Sciences
115 Broadway, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10006
(just south of Zuccotti Park)
or you can attend virtually on Zoom
A Zoom link to join virtually will be emailed to all attendees prior to the lecture. Please indicate below if you will be joining in person or virtually.
Questions? Contact anthropologysectionnyas@gmail.com
Speaker
Webb Keane
George Herbert Mead Distinguished University Professor
University of Michigan
Discussant
Danilyn Rutherford
President
Wenner-Gren Foundation
Discussant
Omri Elisha
Associate Professor of Anthropology
Queens College and CUNY Graduate Center