AI, Cultural Diversity and Sustainability Walk into a Bar: What happens when a more diverse world meets increasingly uniform ways of knowing?
AI, Cultural Diversity and Sustainability Walk into a Bar: What happens when a more diverse world meets increasingly uniform ways of knowing?
Date: 9 December, 11h-13h CET
Online
For lecturers, researchers, and administrative professional
Content
Can a society become increasingly culturally diverse while also becoming increasingly uniform in the ways it produces, accesses and circulates knowledge? And what would that mean for social sustainability?
This session explores the tension between cultural diversity and the increasing concentration of the systems through which knowledge is produced, accessed and circulated. Drawing on the idea that cultural diversity can function as a reservoir of alternative ways of understanding and solving unforeseen problems, it asks what happens when increasingly diverse societies rely on increasingly concentrated systems of knowledge — particularly artificial intelligence.
The session explores several dimensions in which AI may contribute to increasingly uniform ways of knowing, including language, knowledge, concepts, representation, and the range of solutions or futures that become easier to imagine.
At the same time, AI may also create new possibilities: lowering barriers to information, supporting translation and education, and potentially making minority languages and knowledge systems more visible and accessible.
The session invites participants to explore where AI may contribute to increasingly uniform ways of knowing, under what conditions this may happen, and if AI might instead support cultural diversity. The discussion ultimately asks what increasingly uniform ways of knowing might mean for social sustainability in increasingly diverse societies.
Learning Objectives
- Develop a critical understanding of the relationship between cultural diversity, ways of knowing and social sustainability.
- Explore how increasingly uniform ways of knowing may emerge in increasingly diverse societies.
- Examine the risks and possibilities of artificial intelligence for cultural diversity and the ways knowledge is produced, accessed and circulated.
- Connect conceptual perspectives with concrete examples from education and society.
- Reflect on the conditions under which AI may support cultural diversity rather than contribute to increasingly uniform ways of knowing.
Outcomes
- Discuss the relationship between cultural diversity, ways of knowing and social sustainability.
- Identify ways in which increasingly uniform ways of knowing may emerge in culturally diverse societies.
- Analyse how AI may both contribute to increasingly uniform ways of knowing and support access to diverse languages, knowledge and perspectives.
- Apply the concepts discussed to concrete examples from education and society.
- Reflect on the conditions under which AI may support cultural diversity rather than contribute to increasingly uniform ways of knowing.