Global Diversity in the Sociotechnical Imagination of AI

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Centre of Governance and Human Rights (CGHR)

This talk contrasts AI research in Ethiopia’s Amhara region with Mātauranga Māori and others, exploring the impact on policy and strategy.

SG2, Alison Richard Building

Seminar Series - Michaelmas 2025

Seminar series on the research theme, Global Experiences of Algorithmic Governance, convened by Dr Ashwin Varghese.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has always been embedded in complex networks of cultural imagination, corporate business, and sociopolitical power relations. The great majority of AI research around the world, and almost all commentary on that research, assumes that the imagination, business, and political systems of Western culture and the Global North are sufficient to understand how this technology should develop in future. This seminar investigates the context within which AI research has been imagined and conducted in the Amhara region of Ethiopia, and explores this in contrast to Mātauranga Māori and indigenous knowledge systems of Aotearoa and Moana Oceania. The questions raised have implications for public policy, technology strategy, future research in development contexts, and the principles that might be applied as practical engineering priorities. About the speakerAlan Blackwell is Professor of Interdisciplinary Design in the Cambridge Computer Laboratory. He joined the AI engineering group at Cambridge Consultants Limited in 1989, following an MSc in the field at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. His multi-disciplinary interests have included an undergraduate major in comparative religion and 40 years as an orchestral musician. He is a Fellow of Darwin College, co-founder with David Good of the Crucible Network for research in Interdisciplinary Design, and with David and Lara Allen the Cambridge Global Challenges interdisciplinary research centre.