Decolonising Design, Decolonising Technology, Decolonising AI ...
Decolonising AI
For this post, the designer, academic and ethicist Ve Dewey and I have got together again. For obvious reasons, decolonisation is a very politicised term in many contexts - from geopolitics and academia to social movements. How this leads into AI is important to both our work.
Intro, The algorithm as gatekeeper
The era of Algorithmic Universalism
Decolonise Design as a primer to decolonise AI
Our set of resources on decolonisation in AI
Closing, on cultural and artistic decolonising
The algorithm as gatekeeper.
“Once again, knowledge and technology are being used to exploit, commodify or objectify marginalised groups, a historically common process to maintain oppression and subordination. The more oppressed you are by the “matrix of domination” (Collins, 2009)”
AI systems are built for, by and within particular, narrow, geographically and culturally constrained infrastructures which can manifest amazingly useful, exciting and inspirational outcomes.
However, there is general and clear consensus both within and outside of big tech that decolonizing AI is urgently necessary. How, why, and when this can and will happen are not clear.
This post will present resources and insight about how “the algorithm” is and can be a named entity, and how future dreaming will not happen without everyone’s dreams at the table.

What does it mean to Decolonise in Design?
“Human beings have turned the very ground of being into the design, the designed, decision and direction — not least by how ‘we’ live and act upon our world and the worlds of others”. (Design theorist, Tony Fry, 2008)
We are in an era of increasing universalism in digital spaces. Creativity, accessibility, inclusivity, a diversity of culture and representations, all frame the inputs for inclusive AI.
In general, when we consider impact frameworks in business, design or technology, e.g., decolonisation, decarbonisation, even ESG more generally, design principles can be applied to AI. Critical and academic foundations of Decolonising in Design do exist, and are evolving with technology.
Dr Dori Tustall, a design anthropologist, educator, advocate, and author of Decolonizing Design: A Cultural Justice Guidebook, provides a good primer on decolonisation.
(Image Source: MIT Press)
1. Putting Indigenous First, which is recognising how the displacement of Indigenous peoples from their lands disrupted their cultural expressions through design and through that understanding, recommitting ourselves to Indigenous land and cultural sovereignty;
2. Dismantling the Tech Bias in the European Modernist Project, which is showing how the myth of “better living through technology” actually worsened conditions for the working class in Europe, and for Indigenous, Black, Asian, Latinx, and other racialised peoples everywhere by making land and labour extraction more efficient;
3. Dismantling the Racist Bias in the European Modernist Project, which shows that the myth of design for Universal humankind was only focused on white, male, working-class bodies and excluded everyone else in a hierarchy of design with Europe at the top, China and India in the middle, and everyone else at the bottom—a hierarchy that still exists today;
4. Making Amends is More than Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), which describes the rise of the Supertoken as the DEI solution and how by hiring in clusters and changing the criteria of evaluation to take into account systemic exclusion, companies might achieve their decolonial DEI objectives; and
5. Reprioritizing Existing Resources to Decolonize, which makes the business case for decolonizing design by demonstrating its moral case for using existing resources.
For Decolonising AI, there is no singular manual. Here is a sample of resources.
1. Algorithmic universalism. In their recent co-authored paper, AI researchers and practitioners Laura Herman and Payal Arora explore the importance of decolonizing creativity in the digital era.
Arora and Herman consider a “non-Western, decolonial perspective on digital creativity and algorithmic cultures.”
What is “Western”?
“The work of historians has and can be immeasurably important in helping us make better sense of a world of political and ethical contradictions: where decolonisation and de-westernisation have become operative concepts…”(Ahmed Ansari, source)
Decolonising creativity in the digital era mentions the word “Western” 48 times, but we could not find a clear definition for the term. The authors argue that technology has largely been designed for Western audiences by Western audiences, overlooking an enormous segment of internet users outside of the Global North. They present instead as an un-delineated category “WEIRD” (white, educated, industrialized, rich, and developed) audiences and experiences.
2. “Obviously, we recognise that this selection reflects our own choice as designers, and in the future, we hope to increase participation in designing constitutions.” (Madhumitu Murgria, Code Dependent, more on this great new book is here).
3. The Algorithmic Justice League, founded by Dr. Joy Buolamwini, is a “movement towards equitable and ethical AI.”
4. Decolonial AI Manyfesto addresses the future of AI and aims to allow historically marginalised groups to “decide and build their dignified socio-technical futures.”
5. MIT Technology Review on AI Colonialism. “While it would diminish the depth of past colonial traumas to say the AI industry is repeating this violence today, it is now using other, more insidious means to enrich the wealthy and powerful at the great expense of the poor.”
6. Abundant Intelligence, a programme out of Aoetera, explores how to conceptualise and design Artificial Intelligence based on Indigenous Knowledge systems.
7. Decolonizing AI: Indigenous Voices Breaking Through the Digital Divide
Source: Hawaii Data Science, which hosted its first gathering on Indigenous Protocols and Artificial Intelligence in 2019
8. Arts collectives and schools in the creative tech space are particularly relevant. The importance of an intersectional, multi-disciplinary lens on AI will contribute to decolonising culture. Creative Computing Institute, University of the Arts London
Phoenix Perry, Course Leader Creative Computing Institute, UAL (image source: UAL)
9. Decolonising AI: A transfeminist approach to data and social justice, published in Coding Rights 2020, a Spanish language organization that brings an intersectional feminist perspective to defend human rights in the development, regulation and use of technologies.
10. Regulatory lobbying, for example the comfortable timeline for the 2025 EU AI Act has allowed civil society, ethicists, designers, and NGOs to engage on matters of decolonisation NGOs and experts warn AI Act negotiators: don’t trade our rights!
11. In this seminal essay published by MIT Press six years ago, researchers Jason Edward Lewis, Noelani Arista, Archer Pechawis, and Suzanne Kite used indigenous epistemology to project a future for human, machine, and non-human co-existence.
12. This is not just an academic discussion. TikTok account @what.if_ai, has over 87,000 followers. “We use AI to create Alternate Reality Art and explore history.” It posts videos with prompts like, “What if Mexico invaded the U.S.?” and “What if Somalia conquered Europe?”
Closing thoughts. Decolonising in culture.
At the opening of the Venice Art Biennale in May, Azu Nwagbogu, the curator of the Benin pavilion held a conversation with artists and curators from the Netherlands, France, Saudi Arabia and Papua New Guinea. Benin’s historical legacy and recent restitution of cultural artefacts shape the pavilion.
What stayed with me, from the conversation in Venice, was a refrain: “decolonisation is not a dirty word”.
Benin Pavilion, a photograph by Ishola Akpo, Iyami (image source: Frieze Magazine).