Publications

Out of the Black Box: Indigenous Protocols for AI

Authors: Angie Abdilla, Megan Kelleher, Rick Shaw, Tyson Yunkaporta

Date published: 2021

In this paper we share our 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 protocols required for the developmental processes of AI, and to be designed with our future cultural interrelationships and interactions with AIs in mind. Through Country Centered Design we established some broad principles and protocols and then moved towards a test case, running some preliminary trials applying an Aboriginal kinship system as a selection framework in genetic computing. Our findings throughout this process were encouraging, indicating that there is potential for Indigenous Knowledge to guide the design and engineering principles and practices of AI, bridging the current ontological and epistemological divides between machines, humans and the environment.

This 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. Each Indigenous community will have its own particular approach to the questions we raise in what follows. What we have written here is not a substitute for establishing and maintaining relationships of reciprocal care and support with specific Indigenous communities. Rather, this document offers a range of ideas to take into consideration when entering into conversations which prioritize Indigenous perspectives in the development of artificial intelligence.

The book benefits from being composed in the context of the world’s oldest living peoples, Australian Aboriginal peoples, with the longest continuum of cultural practice and technologies. It offers a set of exemplary media practices from Australian artist-researchers actively creating new aesthetics and storytelling methods through innovative use of emerging digital technologies. With relevance to artists, researchers, and the wider public, it provokes critical thinking around ‘technology as cultural practice’, and offers tangible case-studies of experimental media practices from a range of art practitioners in diverse cultural contexts. Equal parts provocation, inspiration, and user guide to thinking about and working with emerging digital technologies in a critical way.

The Indigenous Robotics Prototype Workshop was developed in an effort to explore a culturally relevant use of technology with urban Indigenous youth. The workshop, held in November 2014, achieved a sense of cultural pride and confidence in Indigenous traditional knowledge while inspiring the youth to continue with their engagement in coding and programming through building robots. Further, the outcomes from the prototype workshop revealed a need to investigate how Indigenous Knowledge Systems, and particularly Pattern Thinking, might hint toward a possible paradigm shift for the ethical and advanced design of new technologies. In this paper, we will examine the implications of such a hypothetical shift for autonomous systems in robotics and artificial intelligence, using the Indigenous Robotics Prototype Workshop as a case study and springboard.