Generative Ethnographic AI - Seed funding MASSHINE

The project's objective is to enable direct interviewing of a qualitative corpus to prolong ethnographic encounters. Large qualitative corpuses must be rendered accessible through a lengthy process of coding and second-hand reporting, whereas interacting with a trained chatbot could generate a genuinely new immersion in the material. The project's goal is to enable AI-curated access to qualitative interviews thereby generating new insights into the material. Furthermore, by exploring the patterns of generative AI in practice, we acquire novel insights into its inner workings and engage in reflections on its application in the context of ethnographic research. Training proprietary generative AI for this purpose is so far uncharted territory. The seed funding aims to initialize the process of data preparation, algorithmic training as well as offer spaces for reflections on the capacities of AI-driven conversational agents in the context of ethnographic research.

Generative AI, AI, Ethnography, Anthropology