Dr. Itchuaqiyaq is an Associate Professor of Technical and Scientific Communication and the Founding Director of the Center for Sustainable Engagement in the Arctic at Virginia Tech University.
She argues that technologies can lead us to outsource our thinking while emphasizing the importance of prioritizing our own reasoning, valuing physical interactions, and investing in analog practices to achieve sustainability at the individual level. As an Inupiaq scholar, she shares examples that illustrate the potential loss and flattening of cultural knowledge when AI systems homogenize distinct cultural practices. She also points out that language data has become a valuable commodity and critiques Big Tech companies’ seemingly altruistic efforts, arguing that they often seek to profit from rare linguistic resources particularly low-resource languages such as Inupiaq spoken by her community, the Noorvik Native Community in Northwest Alaska. If tech companies are willing to move beyond merely seeking profit off rare languages, Dr. Itchuaqiyaq provides recommendations of language revitalization programs that can make a real intergenerational impact.
In this interview, she offers a nuanced perspective that identifies the capitalist forces driving the accelerated growth of AI technologies while also recognizing the need for tribal communities to access these technologies to compensate for the training and resources they may lack in effectively communicating their ideas. She also draws important connections between writing and class, noting that a person’s ability to communicate effectively is closely tied to how they are perceived.
Download interview transcript here.
