Front and back cover caption, volume 42 issue 1 Front cover caption, volume 42 issue 1 TO BE OR NOT TO BE IN THE AGE OF AI In the Sinhalese Suniyama, the master anti‐sorcery rite, the major edifice is the Palace of Mahasammata, the Original World Ruler. The sorcery victim enters inside the structure, a model of the cosmic order and process, and sits on the world mandala in the position of the Void, the situation of the first victim, Mahasammata's Queen, and the site of cosmic emergence, the forming of form. Here the victim is bound in the coils of sorcery, of death, to be cut free and re‐potentiated. In the photograph, the place can be seen where the victim will sit, behind the door into Mahasammata's Palace. Seated on the cosmic mandala, the victim is also situated in the womb space (garbha) of Mahasammata's Queen. The victim is seated after taking the path of the World Poisoner's (Vasavarti Maraya) striking form as the viper of sorcery drawn on the ground before the entrance. Inside the Palace the victim is bound in the snake's coils and then cut free whereupon the victim will then begin to engage in acts of reality reconstruction and self‐reproduction. At that time a ritualist will play the role of the sorcerer and destroy the building and effectively himself. The architecture that enabled transformation cannot survive it. This image, from Bruce Kapferer's ethnographic fieldwork in Sri Lanka, illustrates the argument of his guest editorial on AI. On 20 January 2025, the Chinese chatbot DeepSeek triggered what Marc Andreessen called ‘AI's Sputnik moment’, wiping hundreds of billions of dollars from American tech valuations. Kapferer asks what anthropology can contribute to understanding this upheaval. His answer draws on cybernetics and ritual. American AI, he argues, remains trapped in ‘trivial’ machine processing: inputs transformed into outputs by rules in a black box. Chinese approaches like DeepSeek have moved towards ‘non‐trivial’ reasoning processes that cycle through stages of self‐verification and adjustment. By exposing its chain of reasoning, the machine simulates an internal dialogue, the ‘I‐Me’ dialectic of the self, inviting users into continuing investigation rather than delivering oracular pronouncements. Yet the deeper issue persists. AI systems are allopoietic: they produce things other than themselves. They lack embodied interiority, the capacity to start something genuinely new. In ritual terms, they resemble the demonic: powerful and repetitive, but locked in pathological fixation. The exorcism achieves what no computation can replicate. Demonic rigidity gives way to fluid selfhood, the sorcerer's grip to the restored person's potency. Human intelligence emerges through such participatory transformation, not through data extraction. To be or not to be in the age of AI is a question of whether we will defend this autopoietic core of our being or succumb to the predictable logic of the machine. Back cover caption, volume 42 issue 1 PRAGMATIC PIETY ON BRICK LANE The Brick Lane Islamic Shop & Brick Lane Mini Market at 100 Brick Lane, with a delivery cyclist pausing outside. The shop's signage advertises shisha, e‐cigarettes, electronic goods, calling cards and mobile chargers, the everyday infrastructure of a diasporic economy serving local Bangladeshi residents alongside tourists and City workers. A few doors down, shuttered premises and graffiti‐covered walls hint at the rapid commercial turnover reshaping this stretch of east London. In his article, Seán Carey examines how Brick Lane's Bangladeshi hospitality entrepreneurs navigate the tension between Islamic prohibition and commercial necessity when it comes to alcohol sales. Most curry restaurants hold alcohol licences, yet many owners maintain what Carey terms ‘pragmatic piety’, flexible accommodations that balance religious principles, business imperatives and izzat (honour). The street's moral geography divides north from south: trendy bars and the Old Truman Brewery complex dominate the northern stretch, while the southern section, considered the ‘Bengali’ heart of the area, remains largely alcohol‐free, anchored by the mosque, halal cafés, barbershops and shops like this one. Life‐course changes matter too. Some restaurateurs who drank when younger become more observant after performing the Hajj, ceasing personal consumption while continuing to serve alcohol to customers. Partnership structures allow responsibility to be diffused. Yet as delivery apps, gentrification and rising costs squeeze the curry economy, Carey asks whether Brick Lane's material infrastructure can survive even as its social accommodations endure.
A 2026 study studied this question.