Cross-Cultural Regimes of Justification: Weaving AI and IK through Adaptive Co-Management on Indigenous Lands

• In Event: Automation, Skill and Identity in an Age of AI - I

Abstract

Adaptive co-management has become a key planning tool to enable Indigenous and non-Indigenous co-managers to work together in pursuit of agreed environmental goals by “learning by doing” and monitoring outcomes. Artificial intelligence (AI) can help to optimise adaptive learning to improve decision-making, based on current knowledge and what we will learn in the future. IK also enables adaptive learning based on local, intimate experiences of human-environment interactions. While the learning inputs and logics of IK and AI are vastly different, they may have the potential to add value to both knowledge and learning systems to improve environmental management outcomes on Indigenous lands. Here we draw on an Indigenous-led research project that has co-developed a conceptual model that conceives of learning and doing as a multi-level process that operates on the basis of different expertise and ‘regimes of justification’. These regimes, or social worlds, incorporate particular ‘regimes of information’ based on the higher values they uphold. The significance of targets and thresholds in this framework stems from their role as cultural standards for establishing reliable knowledge in different regimes. Key to this effort has been regard to who has agency and expertise in processes of knowledge production and quality control. The paper provides examples of what constitutes knowledge in each regime, and explores the implications of this framework to guide decisions around if and how technological advances can help Indigenous communities to find solutions to complex environmental management problems.

Author

• Cathy Robinson, CSIRO