Many Worlds of AI

Abstract: Bangladesh has been largely excluded in the conversations around the socio-technical and cultural implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) despite observing a huge inflow of ‘intelligent’ systems and applications like the rest of the world in recent times. However, our decade-long ethnographic and design studies with various groups including faith-based communities, indigenous and rural populations in the country demonstrate (a) how the ‘secular’ proposition of AI is often refused and resisted (Interactions 2022, CHI 2022), (b) how AI prediction tools fall short in addressing the hopes and aspirations of the locals (CHI 2019, 2021) and (c) how the empiricist model of data denies the local histories, traditions, and identities (CSCW 2020). Based on these original and empirically grounded studies from one of the most marginalized territories in the map of global AI practices, we aim to organize a one-hour virtual interactive ‘Panel Discussion’ in this conference. We intend to discuss how ‘intelligence’ and associated ethics are conceptualized by the local communities and how those could be accommodated in designing scalable AI technologies and policies and contribute to develop alternative and competing values such as diversity and plurality in AI Ethics scholarship. Discussions will commence with three short case studies (7-minutes each) reflecting on the local and situated ‘knowledges’ around AI based on the diverse oral culture, myths, legends, wisdom, and visual and performative art practices in Bangladesh. Later, we will invite participants to engage with these communications by sharing their questions, concerns, and thoughts. We intend to publicize the session via relevant professional mailing lists, appropriate social media outlets, as well as personal connections with various research communities from diverse geographical regions. This panel discussion is our ongoing scholarly effort towards strengthening ‘AI Narratives’ from Bangladesh after successful similar initiatives in other venues, including, CHI, FAccT and Mozilla Festival.

Panelists: Sharifa Sultana is a PhD Candidate at Cornell University, USA and Facebook Fellow. She conducts research in the intersection of HCI, ICTD, wellbeing, and feminist-HCI. She designs to address the challenges for the rural low-education population while accessing information. She actively engages with rural communities, local NGOs, and traditional healthcare support providers in rural Bangladesh to design computational tools and systems.

Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto and a Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society Fellow. His research is at the intersection of HCI, ICTD, and faith. Rifat conducts qualitative studies and computational analysis to explore faith-based values, rationality, and politics; and designs technologies to mitigate faith-based intolerance and make technologies more inclusive and just.

Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at University of Toronto. He conducts research in the intersection between Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Information and Communication Technology and Development (ICTD). He received his PhD in Information Science from Cornell University in 2017. He established the first HCI research lab in Bangladesh in 2009, and still maintains it. His research work is built around the concept of ‘voice’ that connects various branches of political philosophy to technology intervention. His current research focuses on the politics of faith and justification in computing.