Dr. Webb Keane is the George Herbert Mead Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He is an expert in the anthropology of religion and ethics; semiotics and language; material culture; gifts, commodities, and money; and media. He is the author of Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination.
In this episode we discuss Webb’s central argument that ethical dilemmas posed by interactions with non-humans and near-humans, including animals and AI, share common themes reflected in narrative and mythology cross-culturally. We discuss these findings in relation to cultural anthropology, evolutionary psychology, AI and large language models, and video games.