Article begins
Curated Collections highlight articles published in the last decade from our AnthroSource archives that speak to urgent issues in the present, offering insight into current events unfolding around the globe. From movements for racial justice and Indigenous sovereignty to the social implications of climate change, technological transformation, war, migration, and public health, these contributions demonstrate anthropology’s enduring relevance and responsibilities.
This collection, on AI, showcases how anthropologists are critically examining AI as a sociotechnical force. From large language models and entrepreneurial “gold rushes” to robot memorials, virtual shamans, and debates over authorship, these articles explore how AI is reshaping human relationships, labor, language, creativity, belief, and social life.
American Anthropologist
Putting Big Tech in its place: A view of the virtual from Los Angeles
Lisa Messeri
American Ethnologist
Forum: AI and Authorship
Susanna Trnka, L. L. Wynn, Jesse Hession Grayman, Charles Menzies (hagwil hayetsk), Aaron Su, Marcel LaFlamme, Natalie Meyers, Jaap Timmer, Anna-Karina Hermkens, Nick Seaver, Hirofumi Katsuno
Annals of Anthropological Practice
Beyond the GenAI gold rush: Mapping entrepreneurial tensions in the age of generative artificial intelligence
Matt Artz, Yaya Ren
Anthropology of Consciousness
Virtually shamans: An anthropological perspective on AI chatbots
Mark Friis Hau, Jakob Krause-Jensen
Anthropology and Humanism
Walter Benjamin in the bathhouse: Meditations on robot mothers, daydreams, and art in the AI era
Jennifer Lee O’Donnell
Cultural Anthropology
Toward an affective sense of life: Artificial intelligence, animacy, and amusement at a robot pet memorial service in Japan
Daniel White, Hirofumi Katsuno
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology
Special Issue: Language machines: Sociotechnical practices and ideologies at work in large language models
Siri Lamoureaux, Michael Castelle, Anna Weichselbraun, Tariq Adely, Courtney Handman, Nils Klowait, Maria Erofeeva, Noya Kohavi, Anna Weichselbraun, Zachary Sheldon, Ole Pütz
Visual Anthropology Review
Anthropology of the artificial: Material encounters among humans and sentient machines
Chris Salter, Alexandre Saunier