Decolonial AI: Decolonial Theory as Sociotechnical Foresight in Artificial Intelligence
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Decolonial AI: Decolonial Theory as Sociotechnical Foresight in Artificial Intelligence Shakir Mohamed1
· Marie-Therese Png2 · William Isaac1
Received: 16 January 2020 / Accepted: 26 May 2020 / © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This paper explores the important role of critical science, and in particular of postcolonial and decolonial theories, in understanding and shaping the ongoing advances in artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence (AI) is viewed as amongst the technological advances that will reshape modern societies and their relations. While the design and deployment of systems that continually adapt holds the promise of farreaching positive change, they simultaneously pose significant risks, especially to already vulnerable peoples. Values and power are central to this discussion. Decolonial theories use historical hindsight to explain patterns of power that shape our intellectual, political, economic, and social world. By embedding a decolonial critical approach within its technical practice, AI communities can develop foresight and tactics that can better align research and technology development with established ethical principles, centring vulnerable peoples who continue to bear the brunt of negative impacts of innovation and scientific progress. We highlight problematic applications that are instances of coloniality, and using a decolonial lens, submit three tactics that can form a decolonial field of artificial intelligence: creating a critical technical practice of AI, seeking reverse tutelage and reverse pedagogies, and the renewal of affective and political communities. The years ahead will usher in a wave of new scientific breakthroughs and technologies driven by AI research, making it incumbent upon AI communities to strengthen the social contract through ethical foresight and the multiplicity of intellectual perspectives available to us, ultimately supporting future technologies that enable greater well-being, with the goal of beneficence and justice for all. Keywords Decolonisation · Coloniality · Sociotechnical foresight · Intercultural ethics · Critical technical practice · Artificial intelligence · Affective community
Shakir Mohamed, Marie-Therese Png and William Isaac contributed equally to this work. Shakir Mohamed
[email protected]
Extended author information available on the last page of the article.
S. Mohamed et al.
1 How Values Shape Scientific Knowledge and Technology The ongoing advances in artificial intelligence (AI), and innovations in technology more generally, encompass ever-larger aspects of the cultural, economic and political life of modern society. We aim to capture this expanding role and impact of AI by widening the conceptual aperture with which it is understood: dually viewing AI as both object and subject, i.e. viewing AI as technological artefacts and as systems of networks and institutions, respectively. As an object, advances in AI research1 over the last two decades—often attributed to a combination of increases in computational power, availability
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