About GHIAI
Our Mission and Vision
Global Humanities and Inclusive Artificial Intelligence Initiative (GHIAI) is an interdisciplinary humanities endeavor at Carnegie Mellon University dedicated to reshaping the foundations of AI research and development. Our mission is to (re)focus the critical lenses informing AI, (re)claim data territories and data socereignty, and fundamentally shift the paradigms of AI through th emultidisciplinary lens of three guiding themes: "What Intelligence?", "Whose Creativity?" and "Which Relations?".
Our Approach
GHIAI uses global humanities research and frameworks to explores the potential of AI to enhance cultural rights, human rights and social justice by asking critical questions: What can we learn from non-predominant principles of cultural rights, human rights, design justice and social justice to critique and shape AI development and use? How can AI be employed to advance these values?
Challenges and Opportunities
In this pivotal AI moment, we challenge the lack of linguistics and cultural diversity in AI training data, where just ten languages constitute 82% of the Internet, with English alone accounting for over two-thirds. We scrutinize the methods by which this data is obtained and the ways AI products are built, programmed, deployed and surveilled. Our goal is to integrate more languages other than English, especially non-European languages, into the AI mix within culturally-responsive values and frameworks. This requires attention to scholarship and practices produced by, about and with currently marginalized communities and cultures, including indigenous, black, global south, gender non-comforming and otherly-abled.
Community and Engagement
The promise of AI for the humanities and humanity is significant—from digitally revitalizing languages to gaining new knowledge of ancient artifacts and texts, and increasing global understanding of local cultures. However, to realize this promise equitably, we must address the structural and infrastructural inequities that dominate current AI development and deployment. We aim to amplify, rather than silence, the ideas, criticisms, lived experiences and knowledge of minoritized cultures, languages and groups.
Humanities disciplines have long been at the forefront of critiquing our present and imagining a better future. AI that benefits all requires humanistic research with a global focus informed by local epistemologies. We see the widespread use of large language models, trained on a predominantly Western English-language internet, as a subject of urgent critical inquiry and an area of immediate intervention. Join us in our mission to create an inclusive and equitable AI future.