A recent article discusses how artificial intelligence (AI) is currently accelerating climate change, harming countries, and perpetuating systemic racism. However, the piece argues that AI can also be a solution to many of the world’s problems if centered on Indigenous ways of knowing. First Nations cultures have a long history of creating and using technology in sustainable ways that benefit all life, unlike the settler colonial logic that seeks to destroy and replace existing cultures and environments.
The article highlights examples of Indigenous technologies, such as Aboriginal fish traps in New South Wales, that support sustainable practices and eliminate waste. It also discusses how settler colonialism has historically used technology to facilitate violence against Indigenous peoples, with AI continuing this harmful trend.
Lead author Jess, a Wiradyuri Wambuul woman, emphasizes the importance of Indigenous cosmology in understanding AI and its impact. The concept of “Wayanha” teaches that everything is related and always transforms, including AI. By acknowledging the technological and cultural elements of AI that came before, the article argues that technology does not have to harm people and the environment.
There is a growing resistance against settler-colonial AI transformations, with projects like the Lakota Language Learning Model and the Indigenous AI Abundant Intelligences research program striving to develop technology grounded in First Nations ways of knowing. By being First Nations-led, local, contextualized, purpose-built, and sustainable, AI has the potential to care for and preserve people and Country rather than harm them.
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Photo credit theconversation.com
