Bringing IT To Native Communities

How do we address issues with diversity in AI?

A lot of us are thinking about how this works, as new models unfortunately sometimes show how human discrimination bleeds over into AI systems.

Solving this problem may have to do with casting a wider net in consulting the human intelligence that builds the systems that we will use.

With that in mind, Mason Grimshaw has a message for the tech world as a whole.

Coming out of his experience with young tech learners, you can hear him talk about the ramifications of AI for his community, the community of Native American peoples and nations, and how making new technology more diverse can have a positive impact for everyone.

Grimshaw has a Master’s degree in business analytics, and works on the Earth Genome project. He’s also a dad, as revealed by his LinkedIn bio:

“By day, I’m a data scientist for the Earth Genome, and by night, I change lots of diapers. I love all aspects of data science, but mostly I want to improve people’s lives and processes. I play guitar, 3D print stuff, chase my 4 year old and 2 year old around, and cuddle with our 1 year old. Additionally, I’m increasingly interested in preserving language for indigenous populations.”

And Grimshaw has been doing some thinking about how to make the future better for his kids, and everyone else’s. In talking about his past experience in the tech sector, he says working in tech as a Native American is hard and lonely.

Addressing questions around data sovereignty, he also notes the morphological differences in language, and how AI might master English, but have problems with other world languages.

“AI should speak every human language,” he says.

He also notes the problem of data model bias, and says that companies and engineering teams in the past have interacted with tribes in non-respectful and non-reciprocal ways. He wants to change that.

“I’ve been very fortunate in the people that I’ve been able to meet, and the opportunities that I’ve had,” he says, showing his desire to provide these kinds of experience for others.

There are some efforts, he says, underway to get young Native American people closer to the coding world.

Grimshaw mentions a Lakota AI code camp that he was involved in, where high school students in Black Hills took a three-week course learning about AI applications and much more.

Noting that the program was a smashing success, he first sets the stage for why these kinds of opportunities are so important for Native American youth. He says many members of Native American communities are all too familiar with tech deserts, where there aren’t a lot of innovations, and notes that the “abysmal” Internet access on many reservations can be a real stumbling block to their further education.

But in the coding camp program, equipped with modern laptops, young Native Americans were able to do big things with technology, Grimshaw says.

“Our students blew us away,” he says, noting that the curriculum included building random forest models, mastering image recognition, and feeding augmented reality apps.

Students built models, he says, to understand the medicinal purposes of plants, and to build Lakota dictionaries.

Now, some of the students are moving toward computer science undergraduate programs, and they’re coming away with better understandings of modern technologies and their uses.

“We’ve built a community that supports each other,” he says. ‘We are confident that our students are going to be leaders and experts in AI/ML, and within their communities, as they continue to wrestle with the questions around data sovereignty and local applications of AI/ML… They’re all learning … an understanding of the power of these methods, and the value of their community’s data.”

Too often, he says, Native American youth are “overlooked and under-valued” in tech spaces.

“When we put them in our indigenous technical space, they excelled. I know that’s possible for all (of their peers), join us in making that a reality, because frankly, the future of our communities, and of AI for each and every one of us, depends on it.”

Those who are interested can find more information at Services 4 — LAKOTA AI CODE CAMP.