Activities per year
Abstract
According to Clifford Geertz, the purpose of anthropology is not to explain culture but to explicate it. That should cause us to rethink our relationship with machine learning. It is, we contend, perfectly possible that machine learning algorithms, which are unable to explain, and could even be unexplainable themselves, can still be of critical use in a process of explication. Thus, we report on an experiment with anthropological AI. From a dataset of 175K Facebook comments, we trained a neural network to predict the emoji reaction associated with a comment and asked a group of human players to compete against the machine. We show that a) the machine can reach the same (poor) accuracy as the players (51%), b) it fails in roughly the same ways as the players, and c) easily predictable emoji reactions tend to reflect unambiguous situations where interpretation is easy. We therefore repurpose the failures of the neural network to point us to deeper and more ambiguous situations where interpretation is hard and explication becomes both necessary and interesting. We use this experiment as a point of departure for discussing how experiences from anthropology, and in particular the tension between formalist ethnoscience and interpretive thick description, might contribute to debates about explainable AI.
Original language | English |
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Journal | Big Data & Society |
Volume | 9 |
Issue number | 1 |
Pages (from-to) | 1-14 |
Number of pages | 14 |
ISSN | 2053-9517 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2022 |
Keywords
- Computational anthropology
- Explainable AI
- Machine learning
- Thick description
- Ethnoscience
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'The Thick Machine: Anthropological AI Between Explanation and Explication'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Activities
- 3 Talks and presentations in private or public companies
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From data science as anthropology to anthropology as data science
Anders Munk (Speaker)
23 Sept 2022Activity: Talks and presentations › Talks and presentations in private or public companies
File -
Thick Machines: Data science and machine learning in ethnography
Anders Munk (Speaker)
17 Jun 2022Activity: Talks and presentations › Talks and presentations in private or public companies
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What are digital and computational anthropological methods
Anders Munk (Speaker)
8 Oct 2021Activity: Talks and presentations › Talks and presentations in private or public companies
Research output
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Friction by Machine: How to Slow Down Reasoning with Computational Methods
Madsen, A. K., Munk, A. K. & Søltoft, J. I., 2023, In: EPIC Proceedings. p. 82-105Research output: Contribution to journal › Conference article in Journal › Research › peer-review
Open AccessFile -
Anders Kristian Munk on Anthropology in Business with Matt Artz
Munk, A. K. & Artz, M., Dec 2022Research output: Non-textual form › Sound/Visual production (digital) › Communication
Open Access -
Beyond Issue Publics? Curating a Corpus of Generic Danish Debate in the Dying Days of the Facebook API
Munk, A. K. & Olesen, A. G., 2020, In: STS Encounters - DASTS working paper series. 11, 1, p. 59-88 16 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Open Access