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    string(9307) "<!-- wp:acf/ihr-story-introblock {"id":"block_621cfa87b2eab","name":"acf/ihr-story-introblock","data":{"text":"Astha Kapoor is the co-founder of \u003ca href=\u0022http://aapti.in/\u0022\u003eAapti Institute\u003c/a\u003e, a Bangalore based tech and society research organization. Her work explores how data can be used to benefit society while safeguarding rights. Astha has previously worked as a consultant on financial inclusion, development policy, and government planning.","_text":"field_621cfe1f2ceab","font_color":"black","_font_color":"field_62044418c7d75","background_color":"grey","_background_color":"field_620441bac7d74","dropshadow":"none","_dropshadow":"field_6267f7f921c52","classname":"","_classname":"field_6204244253a3f","observer_id":"","_observer_id":"field_6204245b53a40","anchor_button_text":"","_anchor_button_text":"field_62b9b0d090a10","anchor_id":"","_anchor_id":"field_6204242753a3e"},"align":"","mode":"edit"} /-->

<!-- wp:acf/ihr-textblocks {"id":"block_62197bcf08855","name":"acf/ihr-textblocks","data":{"hide_page_title":"0","_hide_page_title":"field_62d294c9f62e2","textblocks_0_text":"This is an extended cut of the interview from\u003ca href=\u0022https://2022.internethealthreport.org/episodes/ai-from-above/\u0022\u003e AI from Above\u003c/a\u003e that has been edited for ease of reading.","_textblocks_0_text":"field_621976bef3f4d","textblocks_0_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_0_bottom_space":"field_621977a9f3f4f","textblocks_1_text":"What does the Aapti Institute do?","_textblocks_1_text":"field_621e38d641532","textblocks_1_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_1_bottom_space":"field_62d29698c68a1","textblocks_2_text":"We are a public research firm based in Bangalore who look at the intersection of tech and society. We examine how people are negotiating and accessing technology, both online and offline. So for example, the government has been digitizing a lot of its services, and the assumption is that once you digitize something, access becomes easier, more equitable. But we know that that's not the case: technology can increase marginalization, vulnerability, and complicate access further. So what does it mean to make access to technology more inclusive and equitable with the increased datafication of society around the world. We’re trying to understand the new mechanisms to govern data, such that individuals and communities have more say in how their data is used, collected, etc. We look at how to make data accessible while safeguarding rights, focussing on human governance mechanisms within organizations, and the policy questions needed to make democratic, participative data sharing more possible.","_textblocks_2_text":"field_621976bef3f4d","textblocks_2_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_2_bottom_space":"field_621977a9f3f4f","textblocks_3_text":"How could geospatial data empower communities?","_textblocks_3_text":"field_621e38d641532","textblocks_3_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_3_bottom_space":"field_62d29698c68a1","textblocks_4_text":"Geospatial data is interesting and tricky. People believe that spatial data isn't about people, because it isn’t generated from human action. But it does impact people. It's air pollution data, for instance, or data about a set of buildings. If you think of optical imagery of some cities, or where water bodies are, those are questions that impact communities. Therefore communities should also have a greater say in how that data is being collected, used, and managed, because there may also be harms. For instance, if there’s a dense part of the city versus a more open one, you could have different sets of rents or access to schools. Construction companies could use it to choose where to invest.\r\n\r\nWhat we know about data, is that it's not equal for everybody. Every set of data opens up an opportunity, and someone could exploit that opportunity.","_textblocks_4_text":"field_621976bef3f4d","textblocks_4_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_4_bottom_space":"field_621977a9f3f4f","textblocks_5_text":"What are the risks of not having spatial data?","_textblocks_5_text":"field_621e38d641532","textblocks_5_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_5_bottom_space":"field_62d29698c68a1","textblocks_6_text":"People who use smartphones generate a lot of data, whereas communities that are not on smartphones may not. These communities may not be mapped, in a certain sense, and may not be able to get the same information or services. On the other end, you may have communities, like religious minorities or others who the state or other service providers want to discriminate against. The objective could be to collect a ton of data about them, to target them. We have so many examples of this happening. We've learned that data is political, and should be considered as such.\r\n\r\nIt's a complex thing. There are, for instance, communities in Bangalore where I live, that are not reflected in Google Maps. So these communities do not experience the benefits of maps, and we know that maps offer huge community value — whether for navigation or to reveal small businesses. And that is a burden certain parts of the city have to carry, because, to other people, they're undiscoverable. The map is dark there.\r\n\r\nThis should be corrected. In some communities, people have gone and photographed and created geospatial data about their own scenarios, where others were unable to. If you, as a community, are not visible to either the government, private sector, or community providers, you may not have lamp posts or sidewalks, or the conditions of your roads may be terrible. So members of a community may be able to collect data digitally or through surveys, but it requires significant mobilization. You need institutional mechanisms, potentially nonprofits, who can mobilize people to volunteer to start collecting data. There are apps and software that allow communities to do this, which you can then plug into existing datasets.","_textblocks_6_text":"field_621976bef3f4d","textblocks_6_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_6_bottom_space":"field_621977a9f3f4f","textblocks_7_text":"How would you protect community data?","_textblocks_7_text":"field_621e38d641532","textblocks_7_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_7_bottom_space":"field_62d29698c68a1","textblocks_8_text":"In India, we are contemplating data protection regulation that looks at protecting individual rights. What’s interesting is that geospatial data is not personal data, right? It doesn't identify individuals or individually identifiable data. So I think it's still a gray area for regulation in India. The government has started to think about how we should treat non-personal data, and how we can empower communities to draw value from it while preventing harm. This is also work that we've been doing at the Aapti Institute, exploring models for “data stewardship”. The question is how to involve communities through an intermediary that can represent their interests, while holding the government or the private sector accountable. Institutions for this don't yet exist in any meaningful, regulated way, but we need representative bodies that reflect the concerns of citizens and communities at different levels. We need intermediaries that represent and safeguard the interests of say, a neighborhood, or women, or religious minorities.\r\n\r\nI'm totally bought into the idea of stewardship. We need to build these stewards within communities, so that more data in data-dark communities is collected and provides a a platform from which to negotiate with the government and with tech companies. 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<!-- wp:acf/ihr-textblocks {"id":"block_62197bcf08855","name":"acf/ihr-textblocks","data":{"hide_page_title":"0","_hide_page_title":"field_62d294c9f62e2","textblocks_0_text":"This is an extended cut of the interview from\u003ca href=\u0022https://2022.internethealthreport.org/episodes/ai-from-above/\u0022\u003e AI from Above\u003c/a\u003e that has been edited for ease of reading.","_textblocks_0_text":"field_621976bef3f4d","textblocks_0_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_0_bottom_space":"field_621977a9f3f4f","textblocks_1_text":"Why is it important to apply an ethical lens to location and map data?","_textblocks_1_text":"field_621e38d641532","textblocks_1_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_1_bottom_space":"field_62d29698c68a1","textblocks_2_text":"Maps are how we make sense of the world, they are an incredible tool in understanding why we as humans do what we do. Increasingly, we've got amazing algorithms that scan over satellite imagery and aerial photography and pick out features. If you haven't trained them properly, you may pick out some features but miss others. A good example of this is the automated creation of a data type called \u0022land cover\u0022. I was just talking to someone in South Africa about this the other day. We know there are people living in an area of grassland but that doesn’t appear in the land cover layer. The danger is that those humans ‘don’t exist’ when someone looks at the data to make a decision. So there’s a real danger in mapping, and when you create derived products. If you haven’t trained  your machine learning well enough, you’re basically going to rub humans out of existence, or rub types of trees out of existence, or take animals out of existence, because you haven’t detected it with your artificial intelligence.","_textblocks_2_text":"field_621976bef3f4d","textblocks_2_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_2_bottom_space":"field_621977a9f3f4f","textblocks_3_text":"What should AI researchers consider before they use location datasets?","_textblocks_3_text":"field_621e38d641532","textblocks_3_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_3_bottom_space":"field_62d29698c68a1","textblocks_4_text":"There’s this really fantastic phrase that gets used in the geospatial world. It’s whether data is “fit for purpose”. Data is hard. In this field, you almost never get the perfect dataset for exactly what you need. So we often grab data and try to mould it. You always hear people go, ‘Oh I had to clean the data, I had to re-structure it. 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And if you can teach your AI to identify them, you can actually calculate for a particular area of the city, the energy draw, size, and capacity of all the air conditioning units and then calculate the energy consumption.\r\n\r\nIf you're a city or an energy provider within that space, it allows you to start predictively thinking, “Where do I actually need to improve infrastructure?”","_textblocks_8_text":"field_621976bef3f4d","textblocks_8_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_8_bottom_space":"field_621977a9f3f4f","textblocks_9_text":"How do you build trust with communities at PLACE?","_textblocks_9_text":"field_621e38d641532","textblocks_9_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_9_bottom_space":"field_62d29698c68a1","textblocks_10_text":"With trust, it's very much about transparency and the communication that you give. The PLACE model isn't so much co-owning with communities as much as it's trying to put agency and sovereignty of data into the space of the government — of trying to put data back into a nation's set of assets to enhance their ability to make the right decisions. We will build a relationship with a national mapping agency within a country and get recommendations for at least two local organizations that can actually do the flying with drones or planes.\r\n\r\nOne of the questions I get is, “But you’re not open data, you know, you’re not open by default?” in this almost pious way. And I challenge that to say, actually we are open. We’re as open as we can be, and as closed as we need to be. The type of data that we’re collecting is incredibly detailed, even if it’s not personally identifiable. It’s looking at homes, at schools, at shopping centers, at roads where people go. If you were to just make that freely available to anybody, then it’s just as open to people who might do bad with it. When we give the data to the government, it is anonymized. They then “gift” us with a license and a copy of the data that we put in a legal trust, which PLACE Community members pay for access to. And that’s how we create a sustainable funding model, so we can continue to fly new imagery again the following year and start the process all over. We create a sustainable cycle of supply and demand this way.\r\n\r\nIn the PLACE Community we expect members to adhere to a code of conduct. We look to organizations we can trust that actually have the best interests of vulnerable populations at heart. This is incredibly detailed, powerful information that the world needs — that governments need — to understand their populations. But equally a terrorist could be looking for the same type of data to work out where to locate a bomb. 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<!-- wp:acf/ihr-textblocks {"id":"block_62197bcf08855","name":"acf/ihr-textblocks","data":{"hide_page_title":"0","_hide_page_title":"field_62d294c9f62e2","textblocks_0_text":"This is an extended cut of the interview from \u003ca href=\u0022https://2022.internethealthreport.org/episodes/ai-from-above/\u0022 data-wpel-link=\u0022internal\u0022\u003eAI from Above\u003c/a\u003e that has been edited for ease of reading.","_textblocks_0_text":"field_621976bef3f4d","textblocks_0_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_0_bottom_space":"field_621977a9f3f4f","textblocks_1_text":"How did townships become the focus of your AI research?","_textblocks_1_text":"field_621e38d641532","textblocks_1_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_1_bottom_space":"field_62d29698c68a1","textblocks_2_text":"I grew up with six siblings in a township called Lebowakgomo in the Limpopo province, in the northern part of South Africa. The houses there were all uniformly sized regardless of the number of people living in them. Neighborhoods were quite packed. Your hospitals, your schools, and other public resources were overcrowded — which was not really the case for suburbs. So I've always wondered, \u0022Why is this?\r\n\r\nWhen I did my masters degree, I had a chance to research something I care about, and that's the first thing that came to mind.\r\n\r\nBefore apartheid, townships were just working class neighborhoods. However, during apartheid they forced people to regroup, and only specific racial groups would live in certain townships. They were occupied by non-Europeans: Indians, black people, colored people. When apartheid ended, anyone could live where they wanted, but systemically it was still hard for you to move. During apartheid, townships were underfunded compared to suburbs. But even after apartheid ended, it looks like resources are still in the same pattern. Or this is what we wanted to investigate: Is this really happening? But then when we tried to research this, we couldn’t find datasets that demarcate townships over time. Townships and suburbs have been merged together in one class.\r\n\r\nThis is where our work stems from, because townships don't seem to exist in official datasets anymore.","_textblocks_2_text":"field_621976bef3f4d","textblocks_2_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_2_bottom_space":"field_621977a9f3f4f","textblocks_3_text":"So how do you create these datasets?","_textblocks_3_text":"field_621e38d641532","textblocks_3_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_3_bottom_space":"field_62d29698c68a1","textblocks_4_text":"Thinking about the size of South Africa, it's quite huge. We pulled together different existing datasets. Datasets from the government define neighborhoods in a certain way according to 'designated land use'. It doesn't necessarily say that there are people, or whether there is development in that space. So we used satellite images and we also used a buildings dataset that shows buildings in the whole country.\r\n\r\nPutting together datasets like that helped us begin to explore neighborhoods. To train machine learning models, we added in characteristics. Given a satellite image section that looks like this, the label is this. For another, the label is that. It looks at hundreds of thousands of these images. In the end, when given an image it hasn't seen, it can predict what neighborhood type it most likely is.\r\n\r\nNow imagine, as neighborhoods grow, they change. Actually, in South Africa this is quite common. Sometimes you would see open space in a satellite image one year, and then if you look in another year, you'll see an informal settlement there. Then over time, the informal settlement evolves into some other neighborhood type. So you need to have some knowledge of what these neighborhoods are and how they evolve.","_textblocks_4_text":"field_621976bef3f4d","textblocks_4_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_4_bottom_space":"field_621977a9f3f4f","textblocks_5_text":"Could you do this without AI?","_textblocks_5_text":"field_621e38d641532","textblocks_5_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_5_bottom_space":"field_62d29698c68a1","textblocks_6_text":"Without AI, you would have to coordinate a large group of surveyors to go into the field. You would have to coordinate people to go throughout the entire country, and record this information. As the country evolves, or as the number of buildings change, you would look at a previous dataset, and see how changes can be added into an updated version. This is a huge coordinated task, and that's usually how the government do it for the census. It's expensive. It's labor intensive.\r\n\r\nWith AI, the potential is that we could have models that do the same task. Then we could be paying attention to evaluating the models instead. Where are they getting it wrong? How can you correct them? You could put humans in the loop, and still reduce the amount of work. But it’s not simple, given that changes are happening all the time. We would have to build models that take all this — and more — into consideration.","_textblocks_6_text":"field_621976bef3f4d","textblocks_6_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_6_bottom_space":"field_621977a9f3f4f","textblocks_7_text":"What outcomes do you hope would result from your work?","_textblocks_7_text":"field_621e38d641532","textblocks_7_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_7_bottom_space":"field_62d29698c68a1","textblocks_8_text":"Well, the first policy change I would hope to see is for the government to stop labeling townships together with suburbs. Because as South Africa, we have a certain past. We need people to be empowered with information, so they can actually take it to the government, and say, \u0022X, Y, Z is not happening, and it hasn't been happening for this amount of time. What are you doing about it?\u0022\r\n\r\nI believe creating datasets like these could also help inform policies around resources in different neighborhoods. There's a lot of inequality, but it's difficult to grasp the extent per neighborhood. Who is affected? Is this really happening or are we imagining it? Once we have evidence, we can have policies change. Perhaps equitable budgets could be allocated to different neighborhood types when they need to upgrade or increase the capacity of resources.\r\n\r\nWhen I was growing up, I suppose life was a little difficult — and unnecessarily so. I think policy changes in this direction could help alleviate some of those unnecessary challenges that a young me would have gone through. When you hear how people are living in other neighborhoods types, it's just a different reality altogether. You always wonder, \u0022Is it really necessary? We are all from the same country.”","_textblocks_8_text":"field_621976bef3f4d","textblocks_8_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_8_bottom_space":"field_621977a9f3f4f","textblocks_9_text":"You limit access to your datasets. Why is this?","_textblocks_9_text":"field_621e38d641532","textblocks_9_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_9_bottom_space":"field_62d29698c68a1","textblocks_10_text":"Imagine if datasets like these were in the hands of insurance companies or banks. They could check in which neighborhood you are living in currently, and then determine the interest rates or premiums accordingly. So now we’re saying townships are here. We’re identifying them, and then automatically they could put a risky score to a person and marginalize them further.\r\n\r\nThat's why we try to be gate keepers. I mean, people have a right to privacy. Even if you are trying to do good, when you have data that's invasive like this, you have to try not contribute to anyone’s hardship. We are doing this work to empower communities, so that they can have ownership of the facts about them. We are also reaching out to NGOs to see how we can empower them with access to the data.\r\n\r\nThere is a risk of negative outcomes for certain communities, when you have datasets like these. Evaluation processes have to be rigorous. That's also why there should be more regulations around the use of data like this. 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And we need collaboration between people of different fields and perspectives to become routine.\r\n\r\nWe see a lot of datasets that are biased or that just don't cover some groups. Decisions are being made everywhere from models that are produced from datasets like that. So it would be amazing if researchers start to think about the people behind those data points, and think about how their solutions actually affect them. AI does not help you with that. The AI just ingests whatever data you give it, and then gives you results accordingly.\r\n\r\nYou have to actually work on the dataset that you're going to feed the AI. If you don't have local knowledge, especially on these nuanced social problems, it can be difficult to evaluate. It's the same with machine learning models that were trained on places like Germany, where they are rich in datasets. 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    string(10185) "<!-- wp:acf/ihr-story-introblock {"id":"block_621cfa87b2eab","name":"acf/ihr-story-introblock","data":{"text":"Michael Running Wolf is the founder of \u003ca href=\u0022https://indigenousinai.org/\u0022\u003eIndigenous in AI\u003c/a\u003e and has worked on language revitalization through \u003ca href=\u0022https://solve.mit.edu/challenges/2020-indigenous-communities-fellowship/solutions/33358\u0022\u003espeech recognition,\u003c/a\u003e as well as on augmented and virtual reality for the protection of Indigenous land and culture. As a software engineer, Michael has worked with Amazon and is now a clinical instructor at Northeastern University in Canada.","_text":"field_621cfe1f2ceab","font_color":"black","_font_color":"field_62044418c7d75","background_color":"grey","_background_color":"field_620441bac7d74","dropshadow":"none","_dropshadow":"field_6267f7f921c52","classname":"","_classname":"field_6204244253a3f","observer_id":"","_observer_id":"field_6204245b53a40","anchor_button_text":"","_anchor_button_text":"field_62b9b0d090a10","anchor_id":"","_anchor_id":"field_6204242753a3e"},"align":"","mode":"edit"} /-->

<!-- wp:acf/ihr-textblocks {"id":"block_62197bcf08855","name":"acf/ihr-textblocks","data":{"hide_page_title":"0","_hide_page_title":"field_62d294c9f62e2","textblocks_0_text":"This is an extended cut of the interview from \u003ca href=\u0022https://2022.internethealthreport.org/episodes/ai-from-above/\u0022\u003eAI from Above\u003c/a\u003e that has been edited for ease of reading.","_textblocks_0_text":"field_621976bef3f4d","textblocks_0_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_0_bottom_space":"field_621977a9f3f4f","textblocks_1_text":"What inspired you to get involved with AI research?","_textblocks_1_text":"field_621e38d641532","textblocks_1_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_1_bottom_space":"field_62d29698c68a1","textblocks_2_text":"I was still living in Bozeman, Montana, where I met my wife Caroline. We found commonality in our love of our tribal heritage. She’s Apsáalooke, Crow, and I'm Northern Cheyenne, Blackfeet and Lakota. We got involved with a nonprofit called \u003ca href=\u0022https://www.facebook.com/FriendsOfTheMadisonBuffaloJump\u0022\u003eFriends of the Madison Buffalo Jump\u003c/a\u003e who are protecting an important archeological site from private development. It's a sacred site for at least 90 tribes and it's critical to our shared intertribal history. There is ancient evidence of teepees being set up there. But what people see now, is just a circle of rocks that often get dismantled by tourists. We thought, ‘Okay, what if we use augmented reality to place a teepee in the middle that people can see on their phones?’ We wanted to make sure they are sustained, so \u003ca href=\u0022https://medium.com/running-wolf/madison-buffalo-jump-virtual-reality-project-gathering-data-58886b62d32a\u0022\u003ewe went out and collected data\u003c/a\u003e\r\n\r\nWe wanted to show Montana’s government that this could be a way to enhance their park systems with technology, but our ultimate goal was to show the connection between the language, land, and culture. Part of the idea was to have voice interaction. As a user, you'd walk around and be able to hear the local Indigenous names of sites, and you would be able to practice speaking the languages too. But at the time, the technology to do this didn’t really exist. So, I said, “Okay, I want to be an AI researcher, because who else is going to do this?”","_textblocks_2_text":"field_621976bef3f4d","textblocks_2_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_2_bottom_space":"field_621977a9f3f4f","textblocks_3_text":"How did your experience as a software engineer for Amazon inform your views?","_textblocks_3_text":"field_621e38d641532","textblocks_3_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_3_bottom_space":"field_62d29698c68a1","textblocks_4_text":"I loved my experience at Amazon, and I loved the teams I worked with. I worked on the privacy organization within Alexa, and it gave me this perspective on how to protect customer data at scale, while also making sure they have access to it. How do we do that for Indigenous people? Is there a middle ground where communities can build datasets and systems that protect their knowledge, without being exploited? I've become a big advocate of \u003ca href=\u0022https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/data-futures-lab/data-for-empowerment/shifting-power-through-data-governance/#what-is-indigenous-data-sovereignty\u0022\u003eIndigenous data sovereignty\u003c/a\u003e, where we fundamentally reconsider how AI research and data governance is conducted. Say a community has a dataset of sacred plants and they want to collaborate with researchers, but only with \u003cem\u003especific\u003c/em\u003e researchers. How do we organize the legal and technical infrastructure for that?","_textblocks_4_text":"field_621976bef3f4d","textblocks_4_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_4_bottom_space":"field_621977a9f3f4f","textblocks_5_text":"What are your thoughts on access to geospatial data?","_textblocks_5_text":"field_621e38d641532","textblocks_5_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_5_bottom_space":"field_62d29698c68a1","textblocks_6_text":"One way to protect the integrity of important archeological sites across North America is to keep them ‘off the radar’. It’s sort of in conflict with this new movement of open data where people want to assemble large datasets. Indigenous communities have resisted publicizing these important archaeological sites, because once they become known it's really hard to protect them. And this affects everything: economy, ecology, people's relationship to their religion, their spirituality and of course their language, and heritage. For instance, there are a few important medicinal plants, and some of them are increasingly rare due to climate change. In the 70s and 80s pharmaceutical companies would just go into Indigenous lands and take these plants to research using Indigenous knowledge. And that was very harmful. There's this one plant we call Big Medicine that only grows in very specific biomes. It is so rare and difficult to obtain, that my dad would say, “Leave your cell phones in the car. We're not even going to risk it being geotagged.”\r\n\r\nBut there need to be different tiers of relationship with technology, because there are other resources that are important to digitize and track, like climate change or pollution levels. More of us are joining technical fields. I myself am a computer scientist, and I'm happy to know that there are others out there starting to build land resource tooling. One of my friends worked for the tribe to build a digitized map of important resources on our land, for tracking and maintenance. It just wouldn't exist without us Indigenous engineers, simply because no one else is interested in doing this tooling.\r\n\r\nIndigenous peoples have always been on the frontlines of protecting the ecology of sacred sites from the conflicting interests of governments and corporate groups. That's also why I joined \u003ca href=\u0022https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Access_Pipeline_protests\u0022\u003ethe pipeline protests in North Dakota\u003c/a\u003e in 2016 because \u003ca href=\u0022https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Access_Pipeline\u0022\u003ethe Dakota Access Pipeline pipeline\u003c/a\u003e would destroy sacred sites. And it did, when it was constructed. My collaborators and I went with press credentials and \u003ca href=\u0022https://medium.com/running-wolf/the-indigenous-humanity-of-vr-9dbe259695e6\u0022\u003ea VR camera\u003c/a\u003e that we secured from Google, and a grant from Facebook.","_textblocks_6_text":"field_621976bef3f4d","textblocks_6_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_6_bottom_space":"field_621977a9f3f4f","textblocks_7_text":"How do you feel about collaborations with big tech companies?","_textblocks_7_text":"field_621e38d641532","textblocks_7_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_7_bottom_space":"field_62d29698c68a1","textblocks_8_text":"It’s hard to build partnerships with large corporations, but some do show interest. For example, Google did a VR experiment on my wife's reservation. School kids in Kentucky could put on a headset and experience my wife's tribe. So there is value in how corporations can create understanding between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities.\r\n\r\nBut there's also a tendency for companies to see data as a resource. People say, \u0022Data is the new oil\u0022 and I think that's apt. Like oil, the extraction of data can be harmful to the local environment and the world. Companies take data into their databases and it becomes proprietary information, and then communities lose access to it. They lose the relationship to their own information—be it geographic or voice data. We need to change the paradigm to say that data is \u003cem\u003ehuman\u003c/em\u003e.\r\n\r\nIf you go into a community with a mindset that data is just a resource or a monetary valuable thing, you're fundamentally harming the community, and you're also diminishing the value of this data. I would argue that it's not just Indigenous communities facing these risks, it's everyone, wherever our data is being exploited.\r\n\r\n\u003cb\u003ePortrait photo of Michael Running Wolf is by\u003c/b\u003e\u003ca href=\u0022http://hannahyoon.com\u0022\u003e \u003cb\u003eHannah Yoon\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cb\u003e (CC-BY) 2022\u003c/b\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ci\u003eMozilla has taken reasonable steps to ensure the accuracy of the statements made during the interview, but the words and opinions presented here are ascribed entirely to the interviewee.\u003c/i\u003e","_textblocks_8_text":"field_621976bef3f4d","textblocks_8_bottom_space":"0","_textblocks_8_bottom_space":"field_621977a9f3f4f","textblocks":["paragraph","headline","paragraph","headline","paragraph","headline","paragraph","headline","paragraph"],"_textblocks":"field_62197599f3f4a","classname":"","_classname":"field_6204244253a3f","observer_id":"","_observer_id":"field_6204245b53a40","anchor_button_text":"","_anchor_button_text":"field_62b9b0d090a10","anchor_id":"","_anchor_id":"field_6204242753a3e"},"align":"","mode":"edit"} /-->"
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