Research Guides: Artificial Intelligence: Indigenous Knowledge and Artificial Intelligence

Overview

As the role of Artificial Intelligence grows in our daily lives, there are limitations and ideas that machine learning continues to struggle with. Indigenous knowledges have an emphasis on place-based learning, interconnectedness, and relationality, which AI does not reconcile with easily (Lewis, 2020). Because AI tools have been shown to be biased against communities of color, and a tool of colonial knowledge, there is active discussion surrounding the relationship between AI and Indigenous knowledges.

Creating ethical AI from Indigenous perspectives
Highlights from a University of Alberta event with guest speaker Jason Edward Lewis, a design and computation arts expert, discussing AI is being developed with built-in biases.
Designing ethical AI through Indigenous-centred approaches
A recorded one hour event with Professor Jason Edward Lewis on how Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies contribute to the global conversation regarding society and AI. From the University of Ottawa.
Indigenous AI-Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Working Group
The Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) Working Group develops new conceptual and practical approaches to building the next generation of A.I. systems.
Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Position Paper
A position paper on Indigenous Protocol (IP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a starting place for those who want to design and create AI from an ethical position that centers Indigenous concerns. From Concordia University.
Making Kin with the Machines
An essay by Jason Edward Lewis, Noelani Arista, Archer Pechawis, and Suzanne Kite discussing Indigenous Epistemologies and artificial intelligence.
Out of the Black Box: Indigenous protocols for AI
In this paper the authors share their journey starting with an international group of Indigenous technologists at the inaugural workshop series in Hawaii in 2019, leading to the IP//AI Incubator in March, 2021.
Key learnings from the foundations of these works were the need for Indigenous AI to be regional in nature, conception, design and development, to be tethered to localised Indigenous laws inherent to Country, to be guided by local protocols to create the diverse standards and programming logic required for the developmental processes of AI, and to be designed with our future cultural interrelationships and interactions with AIs in mind.
Resisting Reduction: A Manifesto- Designing our Complex Future with Machines
A paper by Joichi Ito looking at different ways of flourishing with technology.
What we can learn from an Indigenous approach to AI
A podcast from McGill University professor Noelani Arista explains how some Indigenous communities are thinking about their relation to technology and the data that feeds artificial intelligence.