It is argued that anthropology requires a new conceptual framework for understanding the contemporary social life of artificial intelligence (AI), and "the magic of AI" is proposed as an analytical concept that shifts attention from AI's technical capacities to the beliefs, uncertainties, and sociotechnical imaginaries through which it acquires authority and efficacy.
Abstract
This introduction argues that anthropology requires a new conceptual framework for understanding the contemporary social life of artificial intelligence (AI). We propose "the magic of AI" as an analytical concept that shifts attention from AI's technical capacities to the beliefs, uncertainties, and sociotechnical imaginaries through which it acquires authority and efficacy. Revisiting anthropological theories of magic, particularly the work of Ernesto De Martino, Bruce Kapferer, and Francesco Della Costa, we argue that AI's apparent autonomy functions less as a property of the technology itself than as a collectively sustained form of belief. These beliefs naturalize AI's purported inevitability, mobilize political and economic investments, and obscure the human labour, infrastructures, and relations of power through which AI is continually produced. Rather than employing magic as a metaphor, we develop it as a theoretical lens for analysing how opacity, trust, and anticipation generate material sociopolitical effects. In doing so, this introduction offers a conceptual framework for understanding AI as a contingent sociotechnical formation whose power rests as much in collective imagination as in computation itself, while introducing the contributions that develop this argument ethnographically across diverse settings.
The concept of “alienated intelligence” is introduced to critically examine contemporary cultural perceptions of artificial intelligence to argue that certain visions of AI function as cultural projections of human cognitive capacities that become externalized, idealized, and reified in technological systems.
The article demonstrates how attempts to decentre the human often reconstitute new forms of authority in attempts to decentre the human and examines the possibility of surpassing standard anthropocentric approaches in AI while maintaining a critical philosophical engagement with the structurally necessary yet precarious character of organizing principles.
It is argued that this understanding of human-GAI engagement, as explained through epistemological beliefs, lays the foundation for alternative approaches to teaching and assessment, student interactions, professional development, and AI governance and policy, while noting that the framework remains an exploratory heuristic requiring empirical validation.
S. Strydom· Journal of Applied Learning...· 0 citations
The rapid development of artificial intelligence has transformed how we perceive technology’s role in shaping human life. Beyond its technical applications, AI has emerged as a profound subject in literature, raising critical questions about identity, morality, and the future of humanity. Fictional narratives often serve as a lens through which societies reflect on the ethical dilemmas and emotional complexities surrounding AI integration into everyday life. This paper examines the complex dynamics between artificial intelligence (AI) and humanity as depicted in contemporary literature. By focusing on Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me, the study interrogates how AI challenges traditional notions of identity, ethics, and agency. It explores questions such as: Can AI possess consciousness? How does AI disrupt human relationships? What does AI mean for humanity’s future? The novel offers a rich examination of ethical dilemmas, human emotions, and the boundaries between human and machine, set against an alternate history of technological advancement. By analyzing AI’s capacity for consciousness, morality, and emotional engagement, the paper interrogates the societal and philosophical implications of AI’s integration into human lives and tries to explore how literature critiques and reimagines humanity’s future in an AI-dominated world. The analysis combines posthumanism and ethical philosophy to critically assess these representations, offering insights into the socio-political implications of a world increasingly defined by AI.
Shruti Tripathi· Knowledgeable Research A Mul...· 0 citations
Artificial intelligence is commonly portrayed as a technical innovation that inaugurates a new social epoch defined by efficiency, automation, and rational governance. This article advances a dialectical anthropological critique of such narratives by situating artificial intelligence within the historical dynamics of capitalism, colonial power, and struggles over labor and knowledge. Conceptualizing artificial intelligence as a social relation rather than a neutral technology, the article draws on Marxian political economy, Fanonian analyses of colonial domination, Gramscian theories of hegemony, Polanyian insights about market disembedding, and Comaroffian critiques of contemporary capitalism. It contends that AI, through labour, epistemology, or governance, is the new hyper-driven moment of commodification and cycle of global inequalities. Meanwhile, AI creates inconsistencies that break down established value and authority regimes, laying the ground for contestation and possible other trajectories. The paper outlines new directions for a critical anthropology of AI that foregrounds historical materiality and contradictions while committing the field to decolonial epistemologies and transformative praxis.
Pitshou Moleka· International Journal of Mul...· 0 citations
Posthumanism is a conceptual framework to question the idea that humans are the centre of the universe. In the huge development of science and technology, humans no longer maintain an anthropocentric hegemony and control. Instead of seeing humans as superior and independent, posthumanism sees humans as a part of much bigger network. This paper explores the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the establishment of high civilisation upon a terraformed planet by critically analysing Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time, an AI fiction. The novel centres on the accidental birth of a self-aware spider colony, as brought about in Dr. Avrana Kern’s AI-guided mission. It extensively delves into AI, evolutionary biology and sociological and sociopolitical dimensions. This paper shows how AI and technology intersect in the post-Earth, terraforming environment. Adopting concepts of Braidotti (2019) and Haraway and Begelke (2003), the study examines how Kern’s technological ambition shapes the new civilisation with the evolution of the planet’s occupants, including both human and non-human intelligences, to see how Children of Time portrays technology as a driving factor in the development of new kinds of awareness, society, and government, and how scientific desire can transcend human limits. The study focuses not on Tchaikovsky’s portrayal of otherness but on the specific role of AI, spurred by human agency, as an autonomous mediator that actively disrupts and destabilises anthropocentric hierarchies, and reconstructs a digital alternative through protagonist’s metamorphosis from a physical being into a digital consciousness. It therefore bridges the gap between literary analysis and philosophical posthumanism and provides a new framework of assessing non-human agency in contemporary sci-fi.
Tawhida Akhter, Suad Abdulaziz Khalil Al-Kadery· مجلة العلوم الإنسانية و الاج...· 0 citations
