Artificial intelligence is already reshaping our world - but whose ethics, needs and perspectives is it serving? Could it become a powerful tool for combatting racism or climate change?
ACU's Associate Professor Jessica Russ-Smith and Monash University's Professor Michelle D. Lazarus call for an approach to machine learning that is representative, grounded and just in their new book The AI (R)evolution: Valuing Country, Culture and Community in a World of Algorithms.
The duo recently joined ABC's Natasha Mitchell at the Wheeler Centre during Melbourne's Now or Never festival for the Charting the Future: First Nations Knowledges and Artificial Intelligence event.
It focused on their book which calls for a more thoughtful, inclusive approach to AI - grounded in justice, community values, and First Nations knowledge.
Associate Professor Russ-Smith, a sovereign Wiradyuri Wambuul woman, award-winning educator and researcher, spoke about the importance of Indigenous sovereignty, decolonising practice, and ensuring that First Nations ways of knowing are not just acknowledged but actively integrated into how we teach, build and apply AI.
"AI has put a lot of white people in a space of discomfort where their knowledge is being taken without their permission," she said.
"That's where it's both a coloniser for even the colonisers, but it's also pushing this new power differential in societies, particularly settler colonial societies like Australia, the US, Canada, around who owns knowledge, who has the right to that?"
The conversation also explored how to reframe our relationship with artificial intelligence with ethical, cultural, and environmental dimensions.
"We [First Nations] are the oldest surviving and living culture in the world. Our resilience, our resistance and our strength is evident," she said.
Monash University's Professor Lazarus said the evening marked another milestone in her mission to bridge science, education, and equity.
"AI isn't separate from us, it reflects the values we build into it," she said.
