Anthropology, AI and the Future of Human Society
Virtual Conference
6 -10 June 2022
Anthropology, AI and the Future of Human Society. AI has come to represent multiple causal drivers of change: amongst them artificial intelligence itself, space exploration, bio-tech and other emerging technologies. The implications for human society could hardly be more significant, and feed into a host of already contemporary concerns, such as sovereignty, economics, politics, reproduction and kinships, ethics and law, conflict and many more.
We wish to explore these issues from the broadest range of perspectives. From its foundation, anthropology has studied the complexity and variety of human society, and now we may turn to developing a sustained body of disciplinary understanding envisaging what may come in near, and more distant eras. There has been systematic consideration already in many other fields, whether within or outside academia. We would therefore invite interested proposals from anthropologists of any background, and also those who would like to think about their work in conjunction with anthropology, or hold a dialogue with anthropologists. The arts as well as the sciences are invited, for this is an area of human speculation where both have made very great contributions, and we see the different approaches as being mutually stimulating.
Without in any way wishing to limit the possibilities, we suggest below a few of the potential areas of interest:
- Visions of the future: scientific and artistic imaginations
- Ethics, law and governance
- Biotechnology: DNA and reproduction
- Consciousness and the machine/biological interface
- Future conflicts and the military
- Economics, the digital future and the creation of value
- Inequality, sovereignty and demography
- Climate change and the environment
- Science fiction and its place in futures studies
- Agronomics and ecology
- Information, democracy and politics
- Robots and sociality, and human/machine interaction
- AI and human Identities
- Space exploration and extra-terrestrial migration
- Disciplinary reflections: anthropological attempts to anticipate the future
Panel proposals should be made please by 4 November 2021 and may be made here.
Call for Panels opens 13 July 2021 and closes on 21 November 2021
Call for Papers opens 13 December 2021 and closes on 11 March 2022
Registration opens 11 April 2022
Conference Fees:
RAI Fellows & Members: £90
Non-Fellows: £150
Concessions (students, unemployed and retired persons): £45
Delegates with low income from Low Income Countries (https://g2lm-lic.iza.org/call-phase-iv/list-of-lic/): £30
