A Blueprint for Anti-casteist AI systems

Dr Shyam Krishna R (Alan Turing Institute)

22nd May 2024, 3.30pm

Roxby Building, 4th Floor Meeting Room

In this talk I will discuss research at the intersection of caste and AI, focusing on caste as a sociocultural marker and a political issue, but often obscured and inadequately conceptualised in AI design, its datasets and outputs. I seek to distil an ontological interpretation of caste and to forward an anti-casteist ethical approach to the design, policy and governance of AI and algorithmic technologies. I propose as first principles, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s treatise on caste and its ‘mechanism, genesis and development’. From this and other literature, some main explanatory aspects can be identified and interpreted for AI contexts.

The topic is ostensibly Indian-centric, but the issue of caste has obvious global implications given the diasporic movements and the prominence of Indian professionals in the AI landscape. This recognition is at the core of this inquiry, that caste is deeply rooted in who is afforded the agency to influence technology and AI globally. It follows then, that the supply chain of AI, from data production to algorithm design, has an influence on the diasporic movement of dominant caste technologists, particularly to innovation hubs like Silicon Valley.  Through this, I argue for a practical, ex-post and ex-ante framework for both an ideologically anti-casteist mechanism and applied ethical assurance in AI.

Part of the Seminar Series “Transformations in Land, Labour, and Meaning in South Asia” organised by the Power, Space, and Cultural Change Cluster, Department of Geography and Planning.