Three experts explore the complex intersection between Artificial Intelligence and U.S. indigenous communities. From the Future of Being Human Substack.
A couple of months or so ago my colleague Sean Dudley mentioned that he’d been working with the AI image-generation platform Midjourney to generate images of Native American towns — and was shocked by what he discovered.
While renderings of a typical American Southwest desert town looked reasonably modern, the same prompt when applied to Tuba City — the largest community in the Navajo Nation – looked more like a run down shanty town (and nothing like the real Tuba City).
The contrast — shown in the image above — is a stark reminder of the biases that still plague generative AI platforms and disadvantage minority groups and communities. And yet, as Sean and his co-author Al Kuslikis explore in a recent article in the journal Tribal College (the journal of American Indian higher education), the news isn’t all bad.
Dudley and Kuslikis’ essay “Opportunity and Risk: Artificial Intelligence and Indian Country” is a must-read for anyone concerned with how the very real bias and misrepresentation in AI platforms impacts minority communities. But it’s also a call to action for ensuring that the equally real potential of AI is also fully realized in these communities.
To explore these risks and opportunities further I asked Sean and Al to reflect on the article and their own perspectives on AI and Native American communities. I also asked good colleague and former student Leonard Bruce to provide some insights from his own perspective as a Native American and member of the Gila River Indian Community.
Together, the reflections below provide a unique insight into the need to be more inclusive and imaginative if we’re to ensure emerging AI positively impacts all lives without disadvantaging — inadvertently or intentionally — those in minority groups and communities …