Inaugural lecture by Professor Maja Hojer Bruun, followed by a reception

Who Knows in the Age of AI? Rethinking Technology Through Anthropology

At a time when machines can generate essays, recommendations, diagnoses and decisions in a matter of seconds, students and professional practitioners increasingly ask: Why do we still need to learn? Yet this is not the first moment in history when new technology has promised to revolutionize education, professional work and public institutions or even render them superfluous. Anthropological approaches remind us that our technologies are not just tools or artefacts that we use, but also encompass bodies, skills, values and forms of collective knowledge. As digital technologies increasingly mediate human activities and interactions, and threaten to isolate us from each other, the challenge is not to learn how to best adopt these technologies but to reflect critically on what technology is, what it could be and what kinds of social lives, institutions and forms of knowledge we want to nurture.