Presentations and discussion with Maya Indira Ganesh, Jason Edward Lewis, Sabelo Mhlambi
Moderator: Tiara Roxanne

Counter to common Silicon Valley myths, the development of new technologies is never objective, detached, nor neutral. What is termed »artificial intelligence« is thus entangled in many political questions – what is the artificial, and how does that differentiate from the »human?« How can the »human« be defined in the first place, and what is its role in and relationship to AI? What are the implications of different cosmologies on technological developments and design? Given the fervour surrounding new machine learning tools and innovations, as well as their widespread adoption, the area demands critical engagement.

Maya Indira Ganesh studies media and digital technology cultures, infrastructures, and aesthetics through applied design and qualitative research methods. Jason Lewis of the Initiative of Indigenous Futures is known for his work locating crucial affordances in Indigenous epistemologies in accommodating and working with non-human agencies. Sabelo Mhlambi, a proponent of Ubuntu Ethics for AI, uses Sub-Saharan African knowledges to interrogate the ways in which neocolonialist dynamics are often embedded in technological developments and unjustly marketed as »progress.« Across three short presentations and a panel discussion, these experienced practitioners discuss new threats and injustices in this rapidly evolving landscape, and potential ways of countering them. They appear in conversation moderated by Indigenous cyberfeminist researcher Tiara Roxanne.

04:40
»The Poetics and Politics of AI Metaphors«
Talk by Maya Indira Ganesh

It would be slightly odd to admit that I don’t quite know what AI is; however, this talk will centre doubt and uncertainty as opportunities to ask what it is, and what else might AI be. In this talk I reflect on a cataloguing of AI metaphors from nine languages across thirteen countries. Metaphors describe, bring depth and emotion, elucidate contradictions, and identify tensions in a domain. Metaphors point to, and inhabit, the gap between what is known and unknown, and allow us to apprehend uncertainty. AI is, of course, itself a metaphor, one that belies that there is much that remains unsettling, mysterious, and unknown about our own humanity and cognition. To engage with these metaphors is to accept that AI is a product of multiple vectors and conditions, both political and poetic. I conclude with a provocation that builds on doubt, hopefully productively: what does it mean to make new metaphors for AI?

23:50
»Connective Tissues; Hyperdense Textures; Relational Technologies«
Talk by Jason Edward Lewis

In 2018, the »Making Kin with the Machines« essay, authored by Jason Edward Lewis, Noelani Arista, Archer Pechawis, and Suzanne Kite, put forth that »Man is neither height nor centre of creation. This belief is core to many Indigenous epistemologies.« Proposing that we consider the challenge of Artificial Intelligence in terms of kinship relations, the thinkers asked how such an approach might transform not only our understanding of AI, but all other computational technologies too. Critiquing anthropocentric visions of the well-being, »Making Kin with the Machines« offers extended »circles of relationships« as a framework and practice for shaping relationships with non-human kin. With »Connective Tissues,« Jason Lewis expands on this work.

43:33
»Whiteness Behind Modern Digital Myths and Mythologies«
Talk by Sabelo Mhlambi

In my talk I will argue that the most significant threat behind AI is likely the fact that it is conveniently used to justify the existing distribution of power and resources within society, often by serving as a proxy of truth and rightness/righteousness. This is both purposefully and productively done so in ways that propagate and promote centralisation of power through whiteness, white supremacy, and Western colonial domination. Like mythology was used to justify power relations, AI acts as a new tool with which to enable the colonial use and extraction of data, and the perpetuation and exacerbation of inequalities. I will suggest that our greatest concern need not be AI, but rather the need to change how power is distributed, in ways that emphasise relationality rather than a misguided view of objectivity/rationality. Sub-Saharan Africa's Ubuntu philosophy, similarly to other indigenous philosophies, provides the tools to realise a more relational world and eventually the relational use of AI.

Recorded live 22 January 2021.
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