Paper short abstract:

Transhumanist philosophy exerts a profound influence on contemporary visions of AI. This paper critiques key issues within this school of thought and advocates for educational projects in which students incorporate anthropological thinking and ethics into the design of AI technologies.

Paper long abstract:

Transhumanist philosophy, with its focus on leveraging technology to expand the powers of self in competitive struggle, exerts a profound influence on contemporary visions of AI. This paper critiques key issues within this school of thought and advocates for educational projects in which students incorporate anthropological thinking and ethics into the design of AI technologies. I discuss two frameworks that can help in this endeavor. The first is a general framework, supplied by Arjun Appadurai, for thinking about anthropology as a future-making discipline. According to his view, anthropologists should not only analyze the logic and forces of cultural reproduction but should also find ways to interrupt and displace them. Ideally, such work would manifest an “ethics of possibility” by incorporating other (non-status quo) ways of being into those processes. The second is a design framework, supplied by cultural theorist Anne Balsamo, for developing what she calls technological imaginations—mindsets that enable people to think critically and creatively with technology. I present her method as a vehicle for incorporating an ethics of possibility into students’ thinking about practical and desirable applications for AI technologies. To illustrate her method and provide an example of an anthropologically inspired technological imagination, I look at a concept called Wave+ that was produced by students in a course taught by the author.