Global AI Cultures

Although generative artificial intelligence (AI) is a global endeavor, it is still most often discussed in the singular rather than in the plural form, with little consideration of the diversity of the cultural, linguistic, and national environments in which it is embedded and framed. To better understand the deep implications of this emerging technology, generative AI needs to be situated more deliberately and rigorously in wider and more diverse cultural geographies. While communities of AI researchers and practitioners have taken important steps in this direction,2 we argue that a truly global approach to AI can only emerge if we emphasize the centrality of culture, understood not just as intellectual activities but as all the ideas, customs, and social behaviors that make up a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period, a group or humanity in general.9 In his classic discussion of the term, Raymond Williams points out that any definition of culture should be "in the plural: the specific and variable cultures of different nations and periods, but also the specific and variable cultures of social and economic groups within a nation."9 A focus on AI cultures, therefore, can help us identify and counteract the limits of universalism, for which generative AI is perceived and represented as having no cultural or geographical coordinates, as well as the limits of cultural essentialism, for which specific cultural approaches are framed within stereotypical representations.