Enhancing Artificial Intelligence with Indigenous Wisdom

Abstract

The current “narrow” or “weak” form of artificial intelligence is, by itself, fundamentally a data analysis tool that does nothing more or less than its programming instructs it to do. It has no values or goals of its own, it simply follows the values and pursues the goals provided to it by its programmers. Artificial wisdom has the potential to make artificial intelligence a better tool and eventually perhaps more than a tool, but at least for now artificial wisdom must also be programmed and therefore similarly reflects only the wisdom of its programmers. Artificial intelligence, with its reductionistic ontology of data and its contrived epistemology of algorithms, is the quintessential product of the Western scientific worldview, and the development and application of artificial intelligence and discussions of artificial wisdom still largely reflect that one, narrow worldview. Artificial wisdom would greatly benefit from incorporating elements of non-Western worldviews, particularly the metaphysically inclusive Indigenous worldview. For example, the Navajo concept of hozho involves the normative values and goals of harmony, balance, interrelatedness, and connectedness. Hozho and other Indigenous concepts are potentially paradigm-shifting additions to artificial wisdom and could greatly enhance the usefulness of and overall benefit from applications of artificial intelligence.