Moving Beyond Big Tech: Blueprints for Community-Led Language AI with Claudia Pozo | AI & Equality Pub-Talk

Paper: TBD (available in June)

The digital world suffers from a profound linguistic disparity, particularly in Africa where a lack of local language content and traditional, Global North-led language technology models fail to meet community needs, often resulting in data extraction and inequitable solutions. In an 18-month research project, in collaboration with the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), we highlight a powerful alternative: a growing grassroots movement of community-based language technology initiatives across Africa that adopt a bottoms-up approach, prioritizing local needs and incorporating indigenous philosophies. This approach centers technology as an act of collective creation and community survival, yet it faces significant challenges, including a heavy reliance on Global North funding that can conflict with goals for self-determination and critical concerns around data governance and ownership in regions with underdeveloped legal frameworks. Ultimately, the research advocates for a fundamental shift in technological practice to support these community-centered development models, providing blueprints for the Global Majority to decolonize AI.

About the speaker:
Claudia Pozo is Language Justice Co-Lead at Whose Knowledge? She’s a South American brown feminist, multifaceted activist, researcher, social scientist and strategist, whose work is grounded in knowledge and language justice. She holds an MPhil in Development Studies and a BA in Communications.