USAWA AI: Building Ethical AI for Historical Justice with Marie Rodet | AI & Equality Open Studio

Open Studio | USAWA AI is an interactive, educational experience built around an AI avatar that draws on carefully mediated testimony from West African survivors of domestic servitude. Rather than recreating historical scenes or offering total explanations, the AI is designed to speak partially and cautiously, reflecting the ethical limits of testimony and the sensitivity of slavery. USAWA AI demonstrates how AI can be designed to protect vulnerable voices rather than extract from them, embedding care and restraint into the technology itself. By foregrounding partial testimony and ethical limits, it challenges dominant AI models that thrive for ‘total knowledge’ and ‘neutrality’, showing instead how AI can support social justice and equitable representation. This work offers a concrete example of AI as an infrastructure for dignity and inclusion.
Explore it: https://jiwegamestorage.blob.core.windows.net/game-files/Usawa%20AI/V4/index.html

About the speaker: 
Marie Rodet is Reader in the History of Africa at SOAS University of London. Her work explores public history, gamification and digital methods as ways of translating historical research into interactive formats that enable ethical engagement with complex and difficult histories, and support equitable, collaborative forms of innovation. She is the narrative and research lead on three educational mobile games—Usawa, Usawa AI and Umoja—all developed in partnership with Jiwe Studios. These projects transform historical research into interactive experiences that foreground equity and ethical engagement, and exemplify her broader commitment to research-led innovation and inclusive research culture.