Session 4001 at the 2024 AAA Annual Meeting in Tampa explored how artificial intelligence is reshaping ethnographic pedagogy and anthropological praxis. Structured as a late-breaking roundtable, the session brought together experienced ethnographers, AI specialists, and a student discussant to examine AI’s growing role in tasks like transcription, translation, and data analysis — and what that means for the interpretive depth, reflexivity, and ethical grounding that define the discipline.
Drawing on Erving Goffman’s work on self-presentation, the roundtable asked whether AI can adequately capture the context-dependent, performative dimensions of social interaction — or whether it flattens them. The conversation also addressed pedagogical implications: how anthropology curricula must evolve to develop both technical fluency and critical awareness of AI’s limits, and how institutions can prevent AI adoption from deepening existing inequalities of access.
Matt Artz participated virtually in this roundtable as an unlisted contributor, joining a conversation that connects directly to his ongoing research on multi-agent ethnography and the infrastructuring of anthropological knowledge into AI systems.
In the Knowledge Graph
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