Out of the black box: how might artificial intelligence develop, if its rules and protocols were shaped by Australian indigenous knowledge?

Detail of proposed artwork by Baden Pailothorpe, wirra, 2020, digital video/real-time animation, point cloud data from Wirra on Adnyamathanha country, blended with Adam Goodes’ GPS data. From Old Ways, New

Like many, we’ve been excited by Tyson Junkaporta’s Sand Talk work, mapping Australian indigenous knowledges and cultures to systems and ecological thinking - the former decidedly enriching the latter.

Here’s a really fascinating recent outcrop of this work, from a digital research institute called Old Ways, New, which forges links between design, computation and indigenous (or “Country-Centred”) practices.

The paper is called “Out of the Black Box: Indigenous protocols for AI”, by Angie Abdilla, Megan Kelleher, Rick Shaw and Tyson Yunkaporta (full PDF download here). For those expert in the field, there are detailed sections dealing with the match between software architectures and indigenous practice.

But we wanted to pick out the parts that at least might make sense to a general reader. Specifically on how the worldview and deep understanding of Australian indigenous peoples might shape the underlying rules (or “protocols”) for AI, in a world of ecological limits.

Extracts below:

We need to progress toward the materialisation of a practical and tangible format that reflected Indigenous peoples’ future dreaming of what AI could become, presented to the broader global AI community… We need this work to be grounded by our relational connections to diverse territories as Indigenous peoples worldwide and based upon these discrete cultural identities.

…We have specifically prefaced localised cultural knowledges, systems and protocols, perspectives, environmental needs and social conditions relating to this continent, intentionally seeking to reveal what an Australian Aboriginal AI could become. We aim to achieve this through experimentation and prototyping how our protocols could deliver alternatives to the usual desired outcomes of automation.

…We bring an Aboriginal perspective to the architecture of AI systems, to data as a derivative of embodied knowledges, and to cultural protocols which govern the intention, affect and effect of AI systems. It reflects an underlying belief that in complex systems the ‘meanings’ or ethics of the system are not separable from the system itself.

Current activity in the AI literature tends to be divided into technical work (data science) and ethical considerations. Such a dualistic approach will not suffice in this area, because of the technical complexity and ubiquitous application of automated systems.

For Indigenous peoples, the land - or Country - is not separate from who we are. If cared for differently and understood as a shared national resource, Country is an infinitely bountiful gift that provides all our needs. External rules and regulations to protect the land are not needed since the love of the land is inscribed within.

The same argument extends to the resource and wealth creation opportunity of AI. If we understand our use of AI as a national resource, then issues of exclusion, privilege and ethics are addressed as part of the algorithmic process in a way that ensures bountiful opportunity for society at large. External regulation is not needed if well-being is the aim of the process.

This work sits within a paradigm shift that is taking place in many fields worldwide. We are emerging from a period of colonialism, where the dominant way of seeing the world was taken as reflecting essential truths.

Indigenous protocols for artificial intelligence represent a clear commitment to systemic change in a time of flux and transition. This is a phase shift towards a way of life that is not transhumanist or utopian, but ingeniously re-embedded in the Law of the land, to ensure the future survival of our living biosphere.

…Indigenous peoples’ connection to the physical, spiritual and sentient worlds are based upon ontologically and epistemologically divergent frameworks, including sensing and presencing.

These complex, relational connections to Country and kinship networks simultaneously align us, while also shaping our discrete cultural identities through Indigenous laws, languages and protocols determined by the nature of Country itself.

As Indigenous peoples, we make sense of the world and act as its custodians by following the Law of the land. This guides our lives and work - not only when we’re out on the rivers and plains, but also when we are working online to create an approach to the conceptual design and software engineering principles within AI.

Through Indigenous governance, standards and protocols we hope to contribute to the evolution of technology, its philosophy and engineering methodologies, by prioritising and centring Country within automated systems and machines. Through the linkage of Indigenous techno-philosophies to sector standards and best practices, a more equitable and healthy relationship between Country, humans and technology may be possible.

From an Indigenous worldview that privileges communal wellbeing, wholeness and balance, we explore Western cultural notions of ‘intelligence’ within AI to begin creating an alternate conceptual foundation - principles and processes that support our future dreamings of AI.

This foundation is informed by what we call our ‘old ways’, or Traditional knowledge systems, in which new precedents for technology design embody relational connections between Country and kin.

The tools our old peoples created were initiated and ritualised from within these integrated knowledge systems. It’s from within this cultural paradigm that we propose a cultural approach to research, iterative development and experimentation, towards creating new forms of AI.

Central to our approach is Indigenous leadership, which enables the creation of policies, standards, and protocols for various software languages, systems and architectures. This isn’t for the sake of [cultural] representation, but in the hope of initiating a divergent evolution of intelligent autonomous machines.

Indigenous leadership offers opportunities to govern technology developments through ancient practices of non-centralised authority, cooperative dynamics, complex knowledge systems and relational incentive structures.

This promotes lawful behaviours that limit negative externalities, thus ensuring well-being. Not just for the team performing a task, but for all our relations, human and non-human, in the present and for generations into the future.

More here. (Maybe also worth noting A/UK co-initiator Pat Kane’s recent E2 column on the possibility of an AC - artificial consciousness - arising from recent artificial intelligence research directions. How might a “feeling” robot register, in the indigenous view of sentient creatures and nature?).