Ethnography in the Age of Automation & AI

Overview

This session grounds important EPIC2025 conversations on the evolution of ethnographic practice at a time when the speed, scale, and goals of AI development pose particular challenges and opportunities.

Ethnographers connect complex systems to peoples’ lived experiences, illuminating the way meaning, value, and behavior unfold in context. As these systems and contexts evolve, the nature of our work also changes because ethnography is an active engagement in the worlds of our research participants, stakeholders, and clients. This adaptation requires curiosity, creativity, and healthy, candid debate – so the speakers in this session will open the conference in that spirit!

Through interdisciplinary expertise and real-world applications, they explore questions like:

• What does it mean to use AI systems ethnographically?
• Can we design and collaborate with AI technologies in culturally and methodologically relevant ways?
• What inference and analysis capabilities does machine learning offer, and how do these enhance or conflict with other research paradigms?
• How does AI intersect with longstanding debates about the nature of quantitative versus qualitative data and methodologies?
• With AI tools promising automation of virtually every identifiable task, how should we assess when and how specific automations make our work better, worse, or just different?
• Do we need to redefine (or at least rebrand!) ethnographic practice and value at a time when AI is assumed to have surpassed many human capabilities associated with research roles, such as pattern finding?
• As AI systems increasingly inhabit the social, material, and even mythological lives of our research participants and ourselves, how and when should we account for them as agents?

Speakers

Elizabeth Churchill is Professor and founding Department Chair of Human Computer Interaction at MBZUAI (the Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence) in Abu Dhabi, UAE. She was formerly a Senior Director of User Experience at Google and has served as Executive Vice President of the Association of Computing Machinery. Elizabeth has a background in psychology (neuro, experimental, cognitive and social), artificial intelligence, and cognitive Science; she holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, an honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Sussex, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Stockholm. She received the Citris-Banatao Institute Athena Award for Women in Technology for her Executive Leadership, the SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award in 2023, and the SIGCHI Lifetime Practice Award. She currently serves as the Co-Editor in Chief of ACM’s interactions magazine, as well as serving as Assistant Editor on a number of journals.

Cato Hunt has spent nearly 20 years helping clients grow their brands by understanding semiotically powered cultural meaning. As Joint Managing Director of Space Doctors, Cato leads the way in exploring and developing new ways in which we can understand, create, and measure meaning by drawing from a wide range of disciplines—from the cognitive and behavioural sciences to design theory, anthropology, and experience design.

Adri Reksodipoetro is the Managing Director of Nation, a qualitative research firm delivering fresh, authentic perspectives on Asia and the Emerging World. For almost a decade he has helped Google localize Search, Assistant, and now Gemini in Southeast Asia, each requiring deep insight into how people process information through the lens of their local context and cultural frameworks.

Louise Vang Jensen is a partner and co-CEO at IS IT A BIRD, a strategic innovation agency in Copenhagen. She has a background in anthropology and has been working in the field for over 10 years. Louise is passionate about applying anthropology in business and helping organizations understand the value of a human-centered approach. Louise’s career includes collaborations with organizations, including NIKE, VELUX, and Novo Nordisk, as well as public sector entities like the Municipality of Copenhagen and Metroselskabet. She has also worked with philanthropic foundations such as Villum Fonden and TrygFonden, as well as media houses like JP/Politikens Hus.