When we put out the call for this themed issue, we placed a single question at its center: Does contemporary AI represent a fundamental shift for business anthropology – or not? More specifically, we asked whether AI marks a genuine break from the digital turn already underway in the field, or whether it is better understood as a cumulative extension of it. This introduction traces what nine essays found: a field mid-conversation, not mid-consensus. The essays, largely from a United States vantage point, approach the question from genuinely different positions – as interpreters, critics, builders, designers, and practitioners whose working lives are already shaped by AI in ways they cannot set aside. Rather than advancing a single argument, the collection offers a conversation in which contributors disagree about the nature of the shift AI represents, about whether the discipline’s primary obligation is interpretive or productive, and about the mood with which practitioners are navigating a moment of genuine uncertainty. With these questions unresolved, the introduction closes by asking: what if? If those who believe that AI is already reshaping the conditions of anthropological work prove correct, the implications may extend beyond methodology to something more fundamental: a transformation in what it means to know anthropologically and, ultimately, in what it means to be an anthropologist.
Matt Artz, Adam Gamwell· Journal of Business Anthropo...· 0 citations
This essay reframes the discourse around large language models (LLMs) by drawing on anthropological and linguistic theories of magic as a positive transformative force. While current discussions often cast AI as mysteriously dangerous – a form of “dark magic” that beguiles users and obscures ethical concerns – we argue that LLMs represent a fundamental shift in human-technology interaction, one requiring ritualistic linguistic precision rather than technical commands. Drawing on theories of performative language and magical rites, we propose that effective prompt construction functions as ritual magic through three essential elements: clear and specific language, contextual framing, and structured sequencing. In this, we show that AI is not a singular tool operation, but rather a mode of forming a mutual cybernetic relationship. Through case studies from the AI Anthropology Toolkit, we show how skilled practitioners harness the “magical” capabilities of LLMs for analytical insights through careful prompt engineering. We then examine implications for business anthropologists working in organizational settings, exploring how this cybernetic relationship enables distributed agency and co-becoming between human expertise and computational pattern recognition. This perspective provides both a theoretical contribution to understanding human-AI interaction and practical guidance for anthropological practice in an era of increasingly sophisticated AI collaboration.
T. Malefyt, Matt Artz· Journal of Business Anthropo...· 1 citation
