Artificial Intelligence and Indigenous Perspectives: Protecting and Empowering Intelligent Human Beings

As 'control' is increasingly ceded to AI systems, potentially Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) humanity may be facing an identity crisis sooner rather than later, whereby the notion of 'intelligence' no longer remains solely our own. This paper characterizes the problem in terms of an impending loss of control and proposes a relational shift in our attitude towards AI. The shortcomings of value alignment as a solution to the problem are outlined which necessitate an extension of these principles. One such approach is considering strongly relational Indigenous epistemologies. The value of Indigenous perspectives has not been canvassed widely in the literature. Their utility becomes clear when considering the existence of well-developed epistemologies adept at accounting for the non-human, a task that defies Western anthropocentrism. Accommodating AI by considering it as part of our network is a step towards building a symbiotic relationship. Given that AGI questions our fundamental notions of what it means to have human rights, it is argued that in order to co-exist, we find assistance in Indigenous traditions such as the Hawaiian and Lakota ontologies. Lakota rituals provide comfort with the conception of non-human soul-bearer while Hawaiian stories provide possible relational schema to frame our relationship with AI.