The new? AI. The old? Indigenous languages. The rescuers? Indigenous in AI, an international community of Native, Aboriginal and First Nations engineers.
More than 50% of the world’s languages will become extinct or seriously endangered by 2100. Most of those languages are Indigenous languages. There are an estimated 4000 indigenous languages worldwide. Approximately one of those languages dies every two weeks when its last speaker dies. Michael Running Wolf, founder of Indigenous in AI, has dedicated his career to preventing this loss.
Running Wolf leads the First Languages AI Reality (FLAIR), an initiative of the Mila-Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute. Researchers in this group are building speech recognition models for over 200 endangered Indigenous languages in North America.
According to the FLAIR website, “Our foundational automatic speech recognition (ASR) research aims to develop a method for the rapid creation of custom models for endangered languages. These models can be used for language learning, audio transcription, voice-controlled technology and much more. Furthermore, Voice AI will position Indigenous communities to participate in the Metaverse in their heritage languages and facilitate intergenerational language transmission, a critical factor for language vitality. It will enable inclusive immersive experiences in which Indigenous youth can reconnect with their heritage in culturally meaningful exchanges and activities.”
Running Wolf noted that one of the challenges in the AI project is the lack of indigenous computer scientists trained in AI. Indigenous techies are necessary because they understand the language and culture.
Running Wolf emphasized that Indigenous scientists know to respect the data itself. “The core data we use isn’t just tweets or social media posts; it’s deeply culturally identifying information from speakers who may have passed away,” he said. “We need to make sure that the community is always retaining their relationship to the data.”
Right now the numbers are not encouraging. Indigenous people make up less than 0.005% of the tech workforce in the U.S. and earn only 0.4% of bachelor’s degrees in computer science every year. But Running Wolf hopes to turn that around as he works to revive dying languages and enable new generations of Native speakers to create ethical tech.