Summary
April 7, 2025 | 6:00 PM – 8:30 PM ET
115 Broadway, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10006
or join virtually by Zoom
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.
Speaker
George Herbert Mead Distinguished University Professor
Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan
Pricing
All: Free
About the Series
Since 1877, the Anthropology Section of The New York Academy of Sciences has served as a meeting place for scholars in the Greater New York area. The section strives to be a progressive voice within the anthropological community and to contribute innovative perspectives on the human condition nationally and internationally. Learn more and view other events in the Anthropology Section series.
Registration
The event is open for registration.