How Indigenous engineers are using AI to preserve their culture

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Indigenous researchers are up against a ticking clock: Of the 4,000 Indigenous languages worldwide, one dies every two weeks with its last speaker. “Within the next five to 10 years, we’ll lose most of the Native American languages in the U.S.,” Michael Running Wolf, founder of Indigenous in AI , an international community of Native, Aboriginal and First Nations engineers, said.

Running Wolf has dedicated his career to preventing this loss. He leads First Languages AI Reality , an initiative of the Mila-Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, where researchers are building speech recognition models for over 200 endangered Indigenous languages in North America.

However, first, he must overcome a major roadblock: There aren’t enough Indigenous computer scientist graduates — people who know the language and culture — to tackle these language preservation projects. Running Wolf emphasized that Indigenous scientists know to respect the data itself. “The core data we use isn’t just tweets or social media posts; it’s deeply culturally identifying information from speakers who may have passed away,” he said. “We need to make sure that the community is always retaining their relationship to the data.”

Michael Running Wolf on First Languages AI Reality at the 2023 TedxBoston stage.Courtesy Michael Running Wolf

Running Wolf said that in his years of artificial intelligence research, he’s only come across about a dozen Indigenous North American AI scientists. “We only graduate one or two Indigenous Ph.D.s in AI and computer science every year,” he said.

Indigenous people make up less than 0.005% of the tech workforce in the U.S., hold only 0.4% of bachelor’s degrees in computer science every year and have one board member at the top 200 tech companies. In 2022, Native-founded companies only received a mere 0.02% of total venture capital funding.

That’s where the handful of Indigenous engineers who do exist come in: They are leading organizations like First Languages AI Reality, IndigiGenius , Tech Natives and the Wihanble S’a Center for Indigenous AI to train Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian computer science students to preserve Indigenous culture and language.

“Traditionally, AI assumes that data is proprietary, and that can be harmful for Indigenous communities,” Running Wolf said. “We want to demonstrate that we can succeed in our mission of reclaiming Indigenous … Read More