Scaling Anthropology Through AI: An Entrepreneurial Move

Anthropology has made a defining feature of its work to critique and interpret waves of technological change, most recently social media and digital infrastructures and currently artificial intelligence (AI). Yet, at the same time, it has struggled to harness digital innovation in order to create value for itself. Briefly looking back at the digital turn as a precedent, I suggest that anthropology risks falling into a recurring pattern with AI: Acting as a fundamental insights contributor and perceptive yet peripheral observer of technologies it does not control or commercialize. I argue that AI also offers a unique opportunity. If anthropology embraces its unrecognized and unrealized entrepreneurial mindset – viewed here as a form of cultural production – it can leverage AI to broaden its modes of expression, audiences, and impact. In this essay, I call this “to scale.”