Augural Anthropology: Staging Retrieval-Augmented Generative Conversations Beyond AI's Illusion of Scientific Understanding
Cluster Member Maxime Le Calvé Invited to UC Davis for AI Anthropology Talk and Workshops
Anthropoligist Maxime Le Calvé at Mall Anders. Photo: SCIoI/Seesaw
We are pleased to announce that Cluster Member Maxime Le Calvé has been invited for a research stay at the Center for AI and Experimental Futures at the University of California in Davis this April. His visit will focus on advancing collaborative research in AI Anthropology.
During his stay, Maxime Le Calvé gave a talk, »Augural Anthropology: Staging Retrieval-Augmented Generative Conversations Beyond AI's Illusion of Scientific Understanding«, on Wednesday, April 9th, from 4:00– 6:00 pm at the CAIEF, addressing the challenges and possibilities of engaging AI in ethnographic experiments to study epistemic cultures, while questioning the assumptions behind AI's claims to scientific understanding. Following the talk, Le Calvé will lead a hands-on AI Anthropology workshop, providing participants with practical insights into retrieval-augmented generative (RAG) methods to curate ethnographic conversation.
On April 11th and 12th, Le Calvé co-facilitates an advanced workshop with the anthropologist Joe Dumit. This two-day session will focus on RAG-based analysis of a large ethnographic corpus, offering researchers an opportunity to experiment with AI-assisted analytical tools in open source code running on local infrastructures.
In addition, on April 4th, Le Calvé participated as a graphic ethnographer in an EER workshop at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (LA MoCA), part of the exhibition of Olafur Eliasson Studio, following up on his ethnographic study of that interdisciplinary project.