Position Paper Indigenous Protocol and Artifi cial Intelligence Indigenous Protocol and Artifi cial Intelligence Woring Grou 30 January 2020 Honolulu, Hawaiʻi indigenousai.net inoindigenousai.net Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Workshops Position Paper 1 Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Position Paper Cite this Document Lewis, Jason Edward, ed. 2020. Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Position Paper. Honolulu, Hawaiʻi: The Initiative for Indigenous Futures and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR). DOI: 10.11573/spectrum.library.concordia.ca.00986506 Download at https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/986506 Report Authors Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Working Group. Copyright © 2020 Individual texts are copyright of their respective authors. Unsigned texts are copyright of the Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Working Group. CONTENTS 1 Introduction ...................................................................................................3 Guidelines for 2 Indigenous-centred AI Design v.1 ..............................................20 3 Contexts 3.1. Workshop Description ............................................................................................25 3.2. AI: A New (R)evolution or the New Colonizer for Indigenous Peoples ............34 Dr. Hēmi Whaanga 3.3. The IP AI Workshops as Future Imaginary .........................................................39 Jason Edward Lewis 4 Vignettes 4.1. Gwiizens, the Old Lady and the Octopus Bag Device ........................................45 Scott Benesiinaabandan 4.2. Gifts of Dentalium and Fire: Entwining Trust and Care with AI .......................................................................58 Ashley Cordes 4.3. QUARTET .............................................................................................................69 Jason Edward Lewis 4.4. How to Build Anything Ethically ..........................................................................75 Suzanne Kite in discussion with Corey Stover, Melita Stover Janis, and Scott Benesiinaabandan 4.5. Wriggling Through Muddy Waters: Revitalizing Euskaldunak Practices with AI Systems .........................................85 Michelle Lee Brown Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Workshops Position Paper CONTENTS (continued) 5 Prototypes 5.1. Indigenous Protocols in Action ..............................................................................93 Caroline Running Wolf and Dr. Noelani Arista 5.2. Indigenizing AI: The Overlooked Importance of Hawaiian Orality in Print ..............................102 Dr. Noelani Arista 5.3. Development Process for Hua Kiʻi and Next Steps ..........................................110 Caroline and Michael Running Wolf, Caleb Moses, and Joel Davison 5.4. Dreams of Kuanoʻo ................................................................................................ 117 Michael Running Wolf 6 Appendices 6.1. Pre-Workshop Blog Posts & Workshop Interviews ............................................125 6.2. Indigenous Protocol and AI Reading List ..........................................................171 6.3. Participants’ Biographies .......................................................................................179 6.4. Workshop Schedules .............................................................................................188 7 Acknowledgements ...................................................................................199 Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Workshops Position Paper SECTION 1 Introduction Learning E Hō Mai. Image by Sergio Garzon, 2019. Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Workshops Position Paper 2 1.0 Introduction “ Aloha is the intelligence with which we meet life. ” — Olana Kaipo Ai 1 “ Our responsibility is in the relationship. Who is building them? Is it the kanaka or the human? The rock, the mineral, the rock and the human are engulfed. They birthed this program. Everything that comes with the kanaka—the human—his faults, his cellular structure, that gets folded in with the mineral. You need the volcanic activity, the structures that create the calcium. We have to interface with the spirit; if we disconnect and let the spirit just move us, we are not having a kinship. The human’s responsibility is to realize that the energy that makes up the god is in you somewhere. If it is not 1 Qtd. in Meyer, M.A. (2004) Hoʻoulu - Our Time of Becoming. Honolulu: Native Books. p. 4. Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Workshops Position Paper 3 Introduction there, how is it possible to interface with sky, interface with the thing you are creating? The fact is that some of you is in it. And some of it is in you.” — Kekuhi Kealiʻikanakaʻoleohaililani2 “ Man is neither height nor centre of creation. This belief is core to many Indigenous epistemologies. It underpins ways of knowing and speaking that acknowledge kinship networks that extend to animal and plant, wind and rock, mountain and ocean. Indigenous communities worldwide have retained the languages and protocols that enable us to engage in dialogue with our non-human kin, creating mutually intelligible discourses across differences in material, vibrancy, and genealogy.” —Lewis, Arista, Pechawis and Kite 3 An Always Unfolding Conversation 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 position paper is an attempt to capture multiple layers of a discussion that happened over 20 months, across 20 time zones, during two workshops, and between Indigenous people (and a few non-Indigenous folks) from diverse communities in Aotearoa, Australia, North America, and the Pacific. Our aim, however, is not to provide a unified voice. Indigenous ways of knowing are rooted in distinct, sovereign territories across the planet. These extremely diverse landscapes and histories have influenced different communities and their discrete cultural protocols over time. A single ‘Indigenous perspective’ does not exist, as epistemologies are motivated and shaped by the grounding of specific communities in particular territories. Historically, scholarly traditions that homogenize diverse Indigenous cultural practices have resulted in ontological and epistemological violence, and a flattening of the rich texture and variability of Indigenous thought. Our aim is to articulate a multiplicity of Indigenous knowledge 2 Kealiʻikanakaʻoleohaililani, K. (March 1, 2019). IP AI Workshop. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Honolulu, U.S.A. 3 Lewis, J.E., Arista, N., Pechawis, A. and Kite, S. (July 16, 2018). “Making Kin with the Machines,” Journal of Design and Science. Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Workshops Position Paper 4 Introduction systems and technological practices that can and should be brought to bear on the ‘question of AI.’ To that end, rather than being a unified statement this position paper is a collection of heterogeneous texts that range from design guidelines to scholarly essays to artworks to descriptions of technology prototypes to poetry. We feel such a somewhat multivocal and unruly format more accurately reflects the fact that this conversation is very much in an incipient stage as well as keeps the reader aware of the range of viewpoints expressed in the workshops. We also wish to specify that none of us are speaking for our particular communities, nor for Indigenous peoples in general. There exists a great variety of Indigenous thought, both between Nations and within Nations. We write here not to represent but to encourage discussion that embraces that multiplicity. Most of the people involved in the IP AI workshops practice in various ways at the intersection of Indigenous culture and digital technologies. The IP AI conversation was one moment in long histories of thinking and making that fed into the participants’ contributions to the workshops, and thus many origin stories could be told. One starting point lies with Angie Abdilla’s “Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Pattern Thinking: An Expanded Analysis of the First Indigenous Robotics Prototype Workshop” co- authored paper from 2017, which examines how Aboriginal practices of articulating, remembering and disseminating cultural knowledge might inform research into pattern recognition algorithms in robotics. 4 Another starting point is the “Making Kin with the Machines” essay co-authored by Jason Edward Lewis, Dr. Noelani Arista, Archer Pechawis and Suzanne Kite in 2018, which proposes that we draw on Indigenous kinship protocols to re-imagine the epistemological and ontological foundations on which we design AI systems. 5 Other starting points are addressed in the contributions below. Our foremost responsibility has been to be in respectful, reciprocal dialogue with each other and our own communities. We are accountable to them first, and this position paper is but