Say Hello To My Robot Friend
It's National Indigenous People's Day and rather than look back, let's look forward.
The practice of decolonization is an ongoing, beautiful, and enraging project of undoing the harms left by and continuing to be perpetrated by colonialism and all of its actors. Too much effort is spent on the colonization part of decolonization, not enough effort is spent on the “de” part of the equation.
For me, as an Anishinaabe person, decolonization takes a radical reimagining of the world around us through a uniquely Anishinaabe lens. From there, I can work outwards, sharing ideas and building worlds that create a strong and grounded future steeped in Anishinaabe thought, language, and life. I’m trying.
I’m really really trying.
I’m inspired by the project of rebuilding our good hearts and minds in a way that empowers myself, my family, my friends, and my community. What is more energizing than unapologetically finding your place in the world and screaming from the top of our lungs, “We’re still here!”
The closest word I can find in Anishinaabemowin for decolonization is biskaybayiing (beh-skah-bye-eeng), which loosely translates to the process of looking back to look forward. I love this word. It’s a beautiful word. I’m among a group of folks who have kind of coopted the word into helping me look at colonialism and the process of unpacking it through a uniquely Anishinaabe lens.
I've spent a lot of my career looking back and reacting to, describing, and explaining what I see behind us, it's exhausting work. I’m committed to continuing to help people understand where we’ve been collectively, but, I’m much more excited about the futures we are building.
I Am Building An Anishinaabe AI, Seriously
Today, my partner
and I am humbly launching a GPT into the world, it's called Indigenous Story Weaver. We're training the GPT to use fact-based primary source materials to train the AI to present Indigenous stories and truths better.While I’m a little annoyed at the pan-Indigenous approach to most things, the GPT will get trained further down the road in specific “fine-tuning LLM’s” that allow me to make the GPT more responsive to Indigenous terminology, language, words and common phrases.
This is a work in progress.
The wonderful thing about the GPT is that the more it is used, the smarter it becomes. I’ve been playing with AI for about a year and a half and to say it does a miserable job with Indigenous material is an understatement.
AI’s and LLM’s are only as smart as the material they consume. They need better materials that are closer to Indigenous sources.
Midjourney spits out a lot of racist and stereotypical bullshit when prompted.
Chat GPT struggles with the source materials it draws from when prompted generically inside the app about anything Indigenous.
The brilliance of Indigenous Peoples is that we are innovation experts, since time immemorial Indigenous Peoples have picked up the tools of the day and used them to survive and thrive.
Today is no different.
Rather than put our heads in the sand and pretend the future and AI aren't going to impact our communities, we're embracing the future and working toward decolonizing the AI space one prompt at a time.
I hope you find some use for this GPT, if you do, let us know how it's working for you.
If you dig it, share it with a friend or two!
The journey continues.
WHERE TO FIND THE GPT
INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO USE INDIGENOUS STORY WEAVER
inside the Chat GPT app, hit the hamburger icon in the top left corner, it’ll open up your menu.
inside the menu, click EXPLORE GPT’s
in the top right corner hit the search magnifying glass
when your search opens, search for INDIGENOUS STORY WEAVER.