Ishtiaque Ahmed, Whose Intelligence? Whose Ethics? Ethical Pluralism and Postcolonial Computing

With the unprecedented advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the last decade, several ethical concerns AI technologies have also emerged. Researchers today are concerned about bias, discrimination, surveillance, and privacy breaching in the use of AI technologies, just to mention a few. However, most of this discourse around “Ethics in AI” has become centered on western societies, and the concerns are emerging from and getting shaped by ethical values that more common in the West than in other parts of the world. To this end, my research explores this ethical concerns of AI in the context of the Global South, especially in the Indian Subcontinent. Based on my decade-long work in Bangladesh and India, I present in this talk, how data-driven AI technologies are challenging local faith, familial values, customs, and traditions, and imposing scientific rationality through various postcolonial computing practices. I further explore how a novel kind of intelligence can be imagined by incorporating local values and community participation.