“AI Anthropology: A New Opportunity for Anthropological Work” argues that anthropology’s current disciplinary crisisx{2014}declining enrollments, department closures, and competitive displacement by computational fieldsx{2014}also presents an unprecedented opportunity. The article introduces AI Anthropology as a new sub-discipline operating across three dimensions: studying AI as culturally situated artifacts, extending anthropological inquiry with AI-enabled techniques, and embedding anthropological insight into AI system design. It presents the AI Anthropology Lifecycle (AAL) framework for operationalizing this vision, illustrates its application through research on AI recommendations in digital art markets, and introduces the AI Anthropology Toolkit, a suite of AI agents designed to make computational analysis accessible to anthropologists while preserving ethnographic rigor.
Artz, Matt. 2025. “AI Anthropology: A New Opportunity for Anthropological Work.” Society for the Anthropology of Work. https://anthrowork.org/interventions/ai-anthropology-a-new-opportunity-for-anthropological-work/.
In the Knowledge Graph
This essay connects to 4 items on this site.