THEME
AI, Anthropological Intelligence
The (SCOPUS / WoS / ISI) GLOCAL Conference on Linguistic SocioCultural Anthropology 2027, AI, Anthropological Intelligence, is timely.
The global expansion of soft and hard technologies, central to which is Artificial Intelligence, has problematized the ontological realities of humanity, the increasing socialization of humanity into these technologies, the mechanized subjugations of humanity to such generative automation, and the capacity of the human beyond that of generative artificial intelligence, inside and outside of the realm of communication.
This unprecedented technological eruption and engulfment of humanity has forced attention to how we as humans must negotiate our discursive and interactive capacities with and through these technologies. Reactions have been complex: Fear, uncertainty and trepidation, attempts to align with yet capitalize on new technologies, concern with current and future securities, deliberation on the survival of humanity, a retraining of humanity to compete with these technologies and to hence ameliorate fears of the redundancy of the human, a rethinking of human evolution and its ontology vis-à-vis intelligent technologies, and efforts to ensure that the capacities of the human continue to exceed those of artificial intelligence. However, a central response has been a patent shift in processes of human communication with and through these intelligent technologies.
At the core of these discursive linkages between the human and technology is the anthropological question of how language and the social and cultural psychologies of these technologies overlap, that is, how shall the human subject now communicatively position themselves in relation to these technologies. The pathways to address this anthropological question include the following.
- Understanding the interactions and intersubjectivities of the human with and through emerging technologies
- Describing the purposes and legitimacies of interaction between the human and technologies
- Defining the purpose of technologies as devices that mediate human interaction and functional human existence
- Envisaging new possibilities through which technologies such as ChatGPT can mediate human interaction and purpose, not least of which are language, linguistics, communication, and the maintenance of semiotics at the core of human processes
Negotiating the semiotics of these new technologies in (post)structural relation to the human - Investigating the technologically mediated potentialities of the interactions of humans, as sentient and sapient beings
The above factors crucially respond to the anthropological question of how humanity will communicate with and amongst these new technologies. Until the present time, this question has been inadequately addressed. Yet, the semiotics of interaction, communication, and mediation with relevance to technology are now universal, evidencing that anthropological attention to the discursive interactions of the human with and amongst the intelligent machine will ground resolutions to that which is the most significant issue in modern history, the subjugation of the human to, or the replacement of the human by, the intelligent machine.
The (SCOPUS / WoS / ISI) GLOCAL Conference on Linguistic SocioCultural Anthropology 2027, themed
AI, Anthropological Intelligence,
will bring together linguistic and sociocultural anthropologists, and scholars and experts of technology, social planning, philosophy, sociology, cultural studies, critical theorists, as well as governments, industry forerunners, and beyond, in order to deliberate on the tension between artificial and anthropological intelligence, and to discuss pathways through which to discover solutions that ramify throughout human societies globally.
The GLOCAL 2027 conference thus has several purposes: To contribute to and alter thinking, policy, and the implementation of policy, with regards to human communication with and through intelligent technologies; to draw on work in the applied, linguistic, and cultural anthropology, sociolinguistics, and other pertinent fields, of off- and online interaction, so as to develop work to reposition the potency and agencies of anthropological intelligences (that is, the multiple intelligences of the human) that themselves mediate developments in and agencies of technology; to draw on anthropological scholarship to bring together scholars and global experts who will convene to rethink human communication and interaction with and through intelligent technologies; to invite discussions on the ways in which anthropological intelligences, as an affordance grounded in the creation and appropriation of semiotic practices and structures, has the capacity to evolve beyond limitations, following grounding work by those such as Gregory Bateson; to bring together scholars the world over to deliberate on classical linguistic sociocultural anthropology, sociolinguistics, and language and society, to rethink the appropriation of such classical linguistic anthropology (ideology, semiotics, language documentation, and so forth) in an era of patent use of intelligent technologies.
Both human sentience and sapience contribute to the construction of human Anthropological Intelligences. As a marked difference between the human and intelligent technologies, the human is well equipped to embody influences and stimulants in diverse, adoptive, and organic ways, and to continuously extrapolate novel symbolisms predicated on the infinity of time, space, social interaction, and environmental factors, in order to subjectively assess these diverse stimulants and their symbolisms. The (inter)subjectivities of the human, in this respect, mediate the growth of multiple intelligences that afford the human subject an agency with which to infinitely govern or assess change and growth, and to engineer sociocognitive and communicative pathways through which to autonomously manage and elevate clusters of these intelligences. While clustering together these intelligences in an infinite array of permutations, the human subject is intelligently positioned to continuously redesign communicative symbolisms in order to reflexively adapt to both sapient and sentient factors.
As such, the conference seeks to reposition the human against a revolution that threatens not to disprove intelligences in the anthropos, but to denigrate human semiotic potentials and ontologies to ultimately render predominant intelligent technologies over the human. To this, the global experts and scholars at the conference will seek to find resolutions to the inhibited expansions of what is otherwise infinite in the human and in humanity, the growth of intelligence and the boundless manipulation of semiotics, with or without the mediation of intelligent technologies.
Classical Linguistic Anthropology
The (SCOPUS / WoS / ISI) GLOCAL Conference on Linguistic SocioCultural Anthropology 2027, while foregrounding its central theme AI, Anthropological Intelligence, also centrally invites papers, organized colloquia, posters, workshops. roundtables, and talks on all facets of Linguistic SocioCultural Anthropology. Over twenty years, the GLOCAL has expanded attention to these classical frameworks, all of which contribute to the understandings of Linguistic SocioCultural Anthropology, Sociolinguistics, Language and Society, and other pertinent fields. For a full list of these strands, see the link https://glocal-consortium.link/theglocal2027/strands/.
At the GLOCAL 2027, as is the case with all GLOCAL conferences, attention to both the conference main theme and to all other facets of Linguistic SocioCultural Anthropology, Sociolinguistics, and Language and Society, reaffirms the need for a conjoining of both classical and progressive frameworks in order to address current and future global challenges. This centralization of both also exposes the need for a holistic approach to current and future global challenges, exposing the indefinite junctures across classical and progressive frameworks. Attention to current scholarship and global challenges must draw on frameworks developed over the past century and a half. Both 20th Century Linguistic Anthropology and 21st Century Linguistic Anthropology are thus co-dependent and inseparable, and must combine in intellectually constructive and stimulating ways to move forward within the broader field and pertinent domains. As has been the case over the past century, in the present era, Linguistic SocioCultural Anthropology, as a scholarship central to academia and larger society, grounds much other intellectual work.