UH part of $17M grant to improve AI through Indigenous knowledge
University of Hawaiʻi
Create(x) Co-Director Kari Noe shows program to teach the first few lines of the Kumulipo.
Create(x) Co-Director Kari Noe and UH Director of Indigenous Innovation Kamuela Enos.
Link to video and sound (details below): https://bit.ly/3HayUS8
WHAT: The University of Hawaiʻi is part of an international group of researchers and Indigenous practitioners that has been awarded a $23-million (Canadian and approximately $17-million U.S.) grant from Canada’s New Frontiers in Research Fund to work on improving artificial intelligence (AI) through Indigenous knowledge.
WHO: The project, “Abundant Intelligences: Expanding Artificial Intelligence through Indigenous Knowledge Systems,” is Indigenous-led and involves 37 co-investigators and collaborators from eight universities and 12 Indigenous community-based organizations from Canada, the United States and New Zealand.
Co-applicants for the grant from UH included:
UH Director of Indigenous Innovation Kamuela Enos
UH Mānoa Professor Jason Leigh, Information and Computer Sciences
UH Manoa Assistant Professor Bryan Kuwada, Hawaiian Studies
UH Manoa Assistant Professor Susan Crow, Natural Resources and Environmental Management
UH West O’ahu Konohiki (facilitator) of Kūlana o Kapolei Manulani Meyer
HOW: The teams will coalesce in locally rooted “pods” to collaborate with Indigenous communities. In this way, each team will learn from, and alongside, Indigenous knowledge keepers to bring novel perspectives to transforming AI.
WHERE: The Hawaiʻi pod will be based at the UH West Oʻahu’s Create(x) digital emerging media lab. Jason Leigh and Kari Noe are the co-directors of Create(x).
WHEN: The grant is for six years.
VIDEO:
BROLL: (1 minute, 53 seconds)
0:00-0:14 - Kari Noe with program visualizing the first few lines of the Kumulipo (Hawaiian creation chant)
0:14-0:37 - Kari Noe with Hina prototype for retelling of famous mo'olelo (stories)
0:37-1:05 - Kari Noe with Waʻo Kiʻi tool teaching Hawaiian vocabulary of native species and environmental change
1:05-1:27 - Kari Noe with prototype immersive environment created for the Polynesian Voyaging Society to teach modern Hawaiian wayfinding
1:27-1:53 - Kamuela Enos with ahupuaʻa table
SOUND:
Kari Noe, Create(x) Co-Director (demonstrating program visualizing the first few lines of the Kumulipo (Hawaiian creation chant)) (20 seconds)
“Basically for this environment we’re going to have it so that the system actually listens to you talk, so that when you recite the first lines in the correct order, different forms of life are going to pop out, starting with polyps and coral to other different life forms.”
Noe (with Hina prototype) (35 seconds)
“I'm very excited for the opportunity to talk through and see what kind of ideas whether it translates to visual projects like this to also just overall protocol and maybe data management and those kinds of very important foundational things that are going to spring up from this grant that now is giving us the capability, resources and time to think through and talk through kind of a new way of interacting with technology that AI is providing us.”
Kamuela Enos, UH Director of Indigenous Innovation (14 seconds)
“The first and foremost is that if you are Hawaiian, your ancestral practices were science and technologies and they were profound sciences and technologies that are important for contemporary society to understand.”
Enos (25 seconds)
“I think there’s a lot of beauty that comes from people being allowed to practically dream and think about ways that they can take anything new and adapt it to serving the well being of their community, but be accountable to some of the challenges that are baked in with any new idea. I think there is a lot to be explored.”