Imagining Indigenous AI
Open accessAbstract
The trajectory that artificial intelligence (AI) research and development is currently following recapitulates the extractive, exploitative, and environmentally excessive tendencies that characterize the evolution of mass technologies since the Industrial Revolution. If we are to keep AI from becoming yet another tool for imposing an impoverished understanding of the good life upon us all, we must look to ontologies and epistemologies that grow from roots different to those of the current mainstream. This chapter describes a series of conversations and resulting future imaginaries aimed at articulating a different trajectory for AI that is founded in Indigenous perspectives and provides tools to critically reconstruct our assumptions to centre computational technologies that enable abundance.
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Many Indigenous communities engage with AI from contexts where connectivity is limited, data in their languages is scarce, and technology has rarely reflected local epistemologies or cultural values.
“Many Indigenous communities engage with AI from contexts where connectivity is limited, data in their languages is scarce, and technology has rarely reflected local epistemologies or cultural values [25].”
From Designing Responsible AI with Indigenous Communities: Towards Participatory AI with ovaHimba and San People in Namibia (2026) · cites this paper as [25]
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Indongo, N. N., Smith, R. C., Winschiers-Theophilus, H., Kandjengo, S., & Mbinge, U. (2026) · Proceedings of the 19th Participatory Design Conference 2026, Vol. 1: Full Papers · doi:10.1145/3796624.3796667
- Authors
- Lewis, J. E.
- Corresponding author
- Lewis, Jason Edward
- ORCID
- Lewis, Jason Edward
- Venue
- Imagining AI
- Publisher
- Oxford University PressOxford
- Published
- 2023-05-25
- Pages
- 210-217
- OpenAlex
- W4381885659
- Cited by
- 8
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 2
- FWCI
- 9.92
- Type
- book chapter
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
- Social Sciences › Health › Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Cybernetics and Technology in Society
- Keywords
- future imaginaries, environmental impact of technology, abundance, indigenous knowledge
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