The Global Cultures of Artificial Intelligence
How cultures like India, Japan and others are developing AI systems from their perspectives & why it’s important to understand.
In Western societies there is a stark difference in how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is viewed compared to other societies, from African and Japanese to Indian. What is emerging today is a fascinating cultural tapestry of AI tools and services, one where Western approaches may play only a part and not dominate the outcome of AI in our global societies.
In the West, Silicon Valley and culture is wrestling with the existential angst of super intelligent machines. Yet in Japan they’re creating AI companies instead of agents, incorporating the concept of “kokoro” (heart/spirit) and in India they’re encoding the ancient Vedantic wisdom into algorithms. African nations are creating AI systems that preserve oral traditions, strengthening community bonds.
Western societies are deeply influenced and informed by Cartesian dualism; a strict separation of mind and matter. Technological development in the West is often seen as competition over cooperation. This has significantly influenced the initial development of AI. While today, Silicon Valley tends to be the message we most often hear, it is less impactful at a global scale than we might think.
If we are to truly see AI as a positive for humanity and how we might integrate it into our worldview, then we should also understand how other cultures see AI, because they too are actively developing their forms of AI.
First, let’s take a quick look at how Western societies tend to view AI and thus inform how it is developed. In Western media the dominant narratives are ones like the Terminator or The Matrix. Western culture places an emphasis on individuality with regard to most technologies and with AI a view of existential risk. A focus on individual rights first, privacy and job losses rather than societal transformation, and an emphasis on moving fast and breaking things with the often abused and debunked concept that market forces fix all problems. Sometimes, but rarely.
Japan’s Approach to Artificial Intelligence
Earlier I mentioned the Japanese application of “kokoro” which is the concept of thinking about heart and spirit in harmony and in this case, reflecting that in AI systems. They also apply the concept of “wa”, which seeks harmonisation, balance over maximization. AI development in Japan is deeply influenced by Shinto religious concepts.
Japanese culture, unlike Western culture, which separates mind from matter, sees consciousness in material things. This is in large part why Japanese society has been more adopting of robots, including in senior citizen care. Rather than seeing robots and AI as replacing humans, they see these technologies as having a harmonious place within society.
African Approaches to Artificial Intelligence
Africa is an incredibly wonderful mix of cultures, rich with ideas and concepts of societal organisation. One common factor we see across many African cultures is imbuing AI systems with the concept of “ubuntu”, the idea that “I am because we are” which in AI development means how the technology can serve community and society over the individual. This approach is more consensus based and the individual, unlike Western cultures, comes last.
In Kenya, AI systems and tools are being adapted for use in agriculture in ways that preserve traditional farming knowledge while increasing productivity. Nigerian approaches are aimed at developing AI language models that preserve local languages and traditions.
India’s Approach to Artificial Intelligence
At the start of the article I mentioned how India is applying the Vedantic concept of consciousness and and intelligence. Much of which throws cold water on the Western view of these concepts, which also means true AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) becomes less likely in terms of a human lens.
As India developed AI tools and systems, much of their traditional epistemology, which recognises multiple ways of knowing (pramanas) means seeing AI as just another form of knowledge generation. For Indian culture there’s less concern over “fake vs real” and more emphasis on utility and dharma (purpose) from the concept of “maya” or illusion from Hindu philosophy.
India similar to African and Japanese approaches to AI reflects the uplifting and communal concept of AI reflected in the Buddhist and Hindu concepts of “seva” or service to society. For AI in healthcare, they take the principles of Ayurvedic thinking in developing health recommendations.
Taking a Global View of Artificial Intelligence
Above are just three examples of different sociocultural approaches to the development of AI systems. In China, they take a more Confucian approach to AI. Indigenous peoples around the world think in more natural and communal systems.
We should not see any one approach to AI as either right or wrong, but rather a reflection of wonderful tapestry of humanity and what it means to be human and the evolution of our species. AI is impacting the entire world at a faster rate than any prior revolutionary technology because our world is connected by digital information systems.
To really consider the role AI will play, how we want it to work for us, how we want have AI exist, means we have to think globally today. It means stepping back and taking a high-level view that considers the way different sociocultural systems consider, approach, view and understand AI and how it should be developed. AI is truly a global technology that cannot be reasonably advanced without a whole-of-humanity view.
There is much talk in Western societies about the singularity, when machines reach and move beyond human level thinking or going beyond todays Narrow AI (tools serving a particular purpose) to AGI or Artificial General Intelligence. But the framework of this thinking today is largely a Western influenced one that tends to ignore, mostly subconsciously, the entirety of humanity and all our different philosophies and perhaps most importantly, our varied ideas and concept around what both intelligence and consciousness are. If AGI is to become a reality, it must, I posit, consider all of humanity, not just a single culture’s ideas of consciousness and intelligence.
The true value of AI may not rest in faster processors and bigger datasets, but rather in the wisdom and diverse cultural perspectives of our world, that have, for millennia, guided our human societies. When we incorporate these varied views, we challenge the techno-capitalist narrative and can see a future where AI amplifies and co-exists with human wisdom, rather than replace it. We end up then deepening our understanding of what it means to be human as a whole.