Location: via Zoom
Registration: Registration will be enabled approximately 10 days prior to the event
Speakers: Mart Artz and Liz Rodwell
Abstract: Artificial intelligence became conversational, and that changed what anthropologists can do with it. Matt Artz, co-editor of the Routledge volume Anthropology and AI, and Elizabeth Rodwell, one of its contributors, take up that shift from two directions. Rodwell goes inside the teams designing conversational agents, where questions of voice, gender, and the uncanny get settled in daily practice. Artz asks what happens to anthropology itself when researchers begin working with these systems rather than only studying them. The session closes with a joint discussion of where this leaves applied practice over the next five years.
Matt Artz is an anthropologist, designer, and technologist specializing in AI product strategy and innovation. He is the founder of Azimuth Labs, host of the Anthropology in Business and Anthro to UX podcasts, and co-editor of EmTech Anthropology and Anthropology and AI. He has had his work featured on TEDx, UNESCO, South by Southwest, and Apple’s Planet of the Apps.
Dr. Elizabeth Rodwell studies what happens when machines learn to talk. An anthropologist and Associate Professor at the University of Houston, she directs the Digital Media Program and founded the university's User Experience (UX) Lab, where she trains researchers to study technology from the inside. Her monograph, Push the Button: Interactive Television and Collaborative Journalism in Japan (Duke University Press, 2024), traced how media professionals navigate technological change, censorship, and misinformation. She is now embedded with teams designing conversational AI, watching decisions about voice, gender, and personality get made in real time—the small design choices that quietly shape how millions of people relate to machines. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright, and the Social Science Research Council, and appears in Science, Technology & Human Values, Engineering Studies, and Information, Communication & Society.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION: This talk will be presented online using Zoom. Check your confirmation email for the link and instructions for joining the event, if needed. The session will be recorded and posted to WAPA's YouTube channel within a few days of the event.
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