M Artz
Biographic Data
| ID | 65810 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M Artz |
| GIVEN NAMES | M |
| FAMILY NAME | Artz |
| SIGNATURE | ARTZ M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Azimuth (United States) |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3822-1429 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Who designs the loop? Anthropology and the cybernetics of human–AI relations
This special issue was born from a conviction that the current moment in AI development demands that anthropology reconsider its own position, contributions, and responsibilities as an active shape...
Closing the loop
This special issue began with a conviction. Anthropology should reconsider its position in relation to artificial intelligence not only as a critic of systems built elsewhere, but as an active part...
AI and Business Anthropology
When we put out the call for this themed issue, we placed a single question at its center: Does contemporary AI represent a fundamental shift for business anthropology – or not? More specifically, we asked whether AI marks a genuine break from the digital turn already underway in the field, or whether it is better understood as a cumulative extension of it. This introduction traces what nine essays found: a field mid-conversation, not mid-consens…
From Digital Turn to Agentic Turn
Business anthropology faces a moment of simultaneous continuity and rupture. As adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) accelerates across US organizations, the digital turn has moved from emerging possibility to disciplinary reality. Yet, the field is already standing at the threshold of something more consequential: an emerging agentic turn, characterized by AI systems capable of delegated autonomous action, goal-directed reasoning, and partic…
The Magical Power of Words in Large Language Models
This essay reframes the discourse around large language models (LLMs) by drawing on anthropological and linguistic theories of magic as a positive transformative force. While current discussions often cast AI as mysteriously dangerous – a form of “dark magic” that beguiles users and obscures ethical concerns – we argue that LLMs represent a fundamental shift in human-technology interaction, one requiring ritualistic linguistic precision rather th…
Grounding large language models in an anthropological knowledge graph
As artificial intelligence (AI) systems increasingly mediate access to knowledge, anthropologists face questions about how to engage with these technologies constructively. In this article I demonstrate how pairing large language models (LLMs) with knowledge graphs, an approach called neuro-symbolic AI, can transform how we engage with our own disciplinary scholarship. I constructed the SfAA Bibliographic Graph, representing 84 years of publishin…
Career Search Patterns in Anthropology
This study analyzes search keyword data to examine what career pathways people associate with anthropological identity when explicitly framing job searches around disciplinary training. Using search engine keyword data collected in October 2025, the analysis examines 42,290 monthly searches across 2,880 unique keywords containing “anthropology” or its subfield names. The findings reveal stark concentrations: forensic anthropology dominates with a…
A Call for an AI Anthropology
Multi-Agent Ethnography
This paper introduces multi-agent ethnography (MAE), an approach that positions LLM-based AI agents as configurable collaborators within distributed human−AI research networks. MAE extends anthropology's tradition of methodological innovation—from multi-sited to multi-species ethnography—by incorporating AI agents as research partners across the entire research lifecycle. Drawing on empirical evidence demonstrating AI's capacity to function as a …
Beyond the GenAI gold rush
As generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) emerges as the latest technological gold rush, this preliminary study examines how entrepreneurs made sense of this transformative moment in the early months of ChatGPT. Through semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs adopting GenAI, observations of AI creators in Silicon Valley, and computational analysis of our qualitative data, as well as Twitter discourse, we reveal a complex reality beneath…
The Art of Sandboxing
In this autoethnographic article, I reflect on my entrepreneurial journey to illustrate the potentials and perils of innovation sandboxing. I highlight how access to sandboxes is a privilege that can both support learning and increase the risks of disconnectedness simultaneously. Through a discussion of my early failures and later successes I attempt to show how sandboxing also enabled my identity exploration, while at the same time, supporting i…
The Digital Turn in Business Anthropology
This essay examines the emerging 'digital turn' in business anthropology, a phenomenon propelled by the increasing prevalence and influence of digital technologies. Despite the significant underrepresentation of digital anthropology in current literature within the Journal of Business Anthropology, its relevance to the traditionally focused areas of organizational culture, marketing, consumer research, advertising, and user experience is irrefuta…
Consumer Genetics
With the dramatic rise in Direct-to-Consumer Genetics has come increasing concern for the potential abuse of consumer health data, often presumed confidential. Companies exchange and monetize their customers’ DNA in a competitive marketplace, obtaining consent through complex legal contracts that consumers must sign. However, drawing on ethnographic data, we show that this consent is rarely “informed.” Particular concerns include lack of contract…
Design Anthropology, Algorithmic Bias, Behavioral Capital, and the Creator Economy
As algorithms become increasingly responsible for discovering information, how we choose to design them will have a significant impact on our collective lived experience. One example is how algorithmic bias affects the estimated 50 million people that make up the creator economy. This group of independent creators is financially dependent on recommender systems to suggest their content. Currently, most recommender system designs produce rich-get-…
Business Anthropology, Podcasting, and the Pandemic
On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic. It was four days after I gave a TEDx Talk and just over a month since I participated in the University of North Texas' Applied Anthropology Expo. Both in-person events provided fertile ground for discussing my findings, practice, and the merits of anthropology. But as the reality of the pandemic sank in, it became clear that I would not have a similar opportunity for some time. To fill the …
Beyond the GenAI gold rush
As generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) emerges as the latest technological gold rush, this preliminary study examines how entrepreneurs made sense of this transformative moment in the early months of ChatGPT. Through semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs adopting GenAI, observations of AI creators in Silicon Valley, and computational analysis of our qualitative data, as well as Twitter discourse, we reveal a complex reality beneath…
Design Anthropology, Algorithmic Bias, Behavioral Capital, and the Creator Economy
As algorithms become increasingly responsible for discovering information, how we choose to design them will have a significant impact on our collective lived experience. One example is how algorithmic bias affects the estimated 50 million people that make up the creator economy. This group of independent creators is financially dependent on recommender systems to suggest their content. Currently, most recommender system designs produce rich-get-…
Business Anthropology, Podcasting, and the Pandemic
On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic. It was four days after I gave a TEDx Talk and just over a month since I participated in the University of North Texas' Applied Anthropology Expo. Both in-person events provided fertile ground for discussing my findings, practice, and the merits of anthropology. But as the reality of the pandemic sank in, it became clear that I would not have a similar opportunity for some time. To fill the …
The Digital Turn in Business Anthropology
This essay examines the emerging 'digital turn' in business anthropology, a phenomenon propelled by the increasing prevalence and influence of digital technologies. Despite the significant underrepresentation of digital anthropology in current literature within the Journal of Business Anthropology, its relevance to the traditionally focused areas of organizational culture, marketing, consumer research, advertising, and user experience is irrefuta…
Consumer Genetics
With the dramatic rise in Direct-to-Consumer Genetics has come increasing concern for the potential abuse of consumer health data, often presumed confidential. Companies exchange and monetize their customers’ DNA in a competitive marketplace, obtaining consent through complex legal contracts that consumers must sign. However, drawing on ethnographic data, we show that this consent is rarely “informed.” Particular concerns include lack of contract…
The Art of Sandboxing
In this autoethnographic article, I reflect on my entrepreneurial journey to illustrate the potentials and perils of innovation sandboxing. I highlight how access to sandboxes is a privilege that can both support learning and increase the risks of disconnectedness simultaneously. Through a discussion of my early failures and later successes I attempt to show how sandboxing also enabled my identity exploration, while at the same time, supporting i…
Beyond the GenAI gold rush
As generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) emerges as the latest technological gold rush, this preliminary study examines how entrepreneurs made sense of this transformative moment in the early months of ChatGPT. Through semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs adopting GenAI, observations of AI creators in Silicon Valley, and computational analysis of our qualitative data, as well as Twitter discourse, we reveal a complex reality beneath…
Who designs the loop? Anthropology and the cybernetics of human–AI relations
This special issue was born from a conviction that the current moment in AI development demands that anthropology reconsider its own position, contributions, and responsibilities as an active shape...
Closing the loop
This special issue began with a conviction. Anthropology should reconsider its position in relation to artificial intelligence not only as a critic of systems built elsewhere, but as an active part...
AI and Business Anthropology
When we put out the call for this themed issue, we placed a single question at its center: Does contemporary AI represent a fundamental shift for business anthropology – or not? More specifically, we asked whether AI marks a genuine break from the digital turn already underway in the field, or whether it is better understood as a cumulative extension of it. This introduction traces what nine essays found: a field mid-conversation, not mid-consens…
From Digital Turn to Agentic Turn
Business anthropology faces a moment of simultaneous continuity and rupture. As adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) accelerates across US organizations, the digital turn has moved from emerging possibility to disciplinary reality. Yet, the field is already standing at the threshold of something more consequential: an emerging agentic turn, characterized by AI systems capable of delegated autonomous action, goal-directed reasoning, and partic…
The Magical Power of Words in Large Language Models
This essay reframes the discourse around large language models (LLMs) by drawing on anthropological and linguistic theories of magic as a positive transformative force. While current discussions often cast AI as mysteriously dangerous – a form of “dark magic” that beguiles users and obscures ethical concerns – we argue that LLMs represent a fundamental shift in human-technology interaction, one requiring ritualistic linguistic precision rather th…
Grounding large language models in an anthropological knowledge graph
As artificial intelligence (AI) systems increasingly mediate access to knowledge, anthropologists face questions about how to engage with these technologies constructively. In this article I demonstrate how pairing large language models (LLMs) with knowledge graphs, an approach called neuro-symbolic AI, can transform how we engage with our own disciplinary scholarship. I constructed the SfAA Bibliographic Graph, representing 84 years of publishin…
Career Search Patterns in Anthropology
This study analyzes search keyword data to examine what career pathways people associate with anthropological identity when explicitly framing job searches around disciplinary training. Using search engine keyword data collected in October 2025, the analysis examines 42,290 monthly searches across 2,880 unique keywords containing “anthropology” or its subfield names. The findings reveal stark concentrations: forensic anthropology dominates with a…
A Call for an AI Anthropology
Multi-Agent Ethnography
This paper introduces multi-agent ethnography (MAE), an approach that positions LLM-based AI agents as configurable collaborators within distributed human−AI research networks. MAE extends anthropology's tradition of methodological innovation—from multi-sited to multi-species ethnography—by incorporating AI agents as research partners across the entire research lifecycle. Drawing on empirical evidence demonstrating AI's capacity to function as a …
Ethics and Social Impacts of AI (7 works) · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture (6 works) · Language and cultural evolution (6 works) · History (4 works) · Computer Science (3 works) · Embodied and Extended Cognition (3 works) · Ethnography (3 works) · Sociology (3 works) · Anthropology (2 works) · Applied anthropology (2 works)