Translating Indigeneity: Adivasi Literature in the Age of AI

Abstract

This article explores the ethical imperatives involved in translating in­digenous epistemologies in the era of artificial intelligence (AI). Regardless of the other challenges that AI purportedly presents to a human-centric world order, its inadequacy to mitigate the crisis posed by social inequality can­not be overlooked. The abundant nature of indigenous intelligence cou­pled with social exclusion and segregation significantly interferes with ef­fec­tive translation of indigeneity with AI-based tools. This article analyzes how en­forced peripherality of the Adivasis in Kerala amplifies the risk of mis­rep­re­sentation and erasure of indigenous knowledges in AI. The first part elab­o­rates on the multiple facets of abundant indigenous knowledge based on se­lect Adivasi texts. The complexities involved in the translation of this abun­dance by humans are juxtaposed against its homogenized rendering by AI-based tools to describe the ethical problems AI-enhanced translation en­tails. The banality of stereotyping, which subsumes Adivasi communitarian iden­tity into a monolithic, timeless entity, is analyzed in the second part of this article.