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Contribution short abstract

Many scholars suggest that the global diffusion of Artificial Intelligence could create a dehumanized world in which we become increasingly reliant on machines for decision-making. In this discussion I suggest that sensuous ethnography is an important way confront these existential challenges.

Contribution long abstract

Many scholars have suggested that the rapid global diffusion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) may well create a dehumanized world in which we become increasingly reliant on machines for decision-making about finances, medical conditions, and even interpersonal relations.  The AI wave, as Mustafa Suleyman (2025) suggests, needs to be contained so that it does not overwhelm humanity, creating a dystopian future in which machine intelligence eclipses human intelligence.  In this contribution, I suggest that no matter the power of AI to produce, for example, a summary of one's life, it cannot reproduce one's sensory orientation to the world. It cannot capture the pleasures of walking in nature, dancing, sipping a fine wine, eating a good meal, or, for that matter, the deep feelings associated with love and loss.  Anthropologists who write or film sensuous ethnographies that are filled with evocations of space and place, the sonority of dialogue, and the idiosyncrasies of character, can produce accessible works (in text or film) that  remind us what it means to be a human being in the age of AI. In this discussion, I suggest that ethnographers are in a unique position to address the existential challenges of the coming wave of AI. By not losing touch of our sensuous experiences, we can recapture our humanity.