This timely Handbook provides a groundbreaking collection of anthropological research on artificial intelligence (AI), examining how anthropology can help to comprehend and critique its development. Evaluating the limits, hopes and fears of AI, leading experts explore its influence as a sociocultural phenomenon rather than a discrete technological system.

Through an ethnographic lens, the Handbook analyzes humanmachine entanglements as they have emerged in AI companions, healthcare, automated policing, warfare, conversational chatbots and fact-checking. Chapters assume theoretical perspectives to scrutinize AI power and how AI evolves on the ground in ethnographic locations and case studies from across the globe. Assessing the current state of AI, the collection examines its implications for the future, in areas ranging from climate change to politics.

The Handbook on Anthropology and Artificial Intelligence is a valuable resource for students and scholars of anthropology, science and technology, innovation, media and communication and sociology. It will also be prime reading for journalists, policymakers and practitioners seeking a deeper understanding of the impact of AI on the world.