Archaeology by and for Robots? Publishing, Data Curation, and Asserting Humanity in the AI Ecosystem

Generative AI has impacted virtually every sector of our society and seems to be enveloping a large fraction of our economy into a speculative bubble. The practice of archaeology has not been immune to its impacts. This presentation will focus on how neoliberal pressures to accelerate publication harm quality, lead to burn out, and undermine data curation and cultural heritage stewardship. These pressures also set the stage for the infiltration of machines into archaeological knowledge exchanges. Reforming archaeological publishing practices to emphasize care and community outcomes will help archaeology avoid a dystopian future of endlessly circulating AI generated slop.

These slides accompanied a lunch talk presented by Eric Kansa at the UC Berkeley, Archaeological Research Facility on February, 25, 2026. Link to lecture on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sahIfCqvxL8