Indigenizing Artificial Intelligence and Programming

SPEARFISH, S.D. – The Lakota AI Camp has returned for a second year, from June 11-30, to bring Indigenous teens to the Black Hills for a three-week AI crash course camp while simultaneously learning Lakota culture and language.

The inspiration for a youth-based code camp came from co-founder Mason Grimshaw’s, a citizen of the Sicangu-Rosebud Lakota Nation, experience growing up on the Rosebud Nation and in Rapid City. Grimshaw said when he began his education at MIT, he wasn’t entirely sure what he was passionate about. Once he discovered computer science, things just clicked.

“I had never seen it (computer programming) before while I was growing up in Rosebud and Rapid City, and I just thought if I had seen this earlier it would have been really beneficial for me,” Grimshaw said.

Indigenous people often are not in STEM spaces, according to census data American Indian individuals make up less than 0.1 percent of computer programmers, while Native Hawaiian and Alaska Native individuals are only 0.07 percent and 0.05 percent, respectively.

“I had this idea that I pitched to my friends,” Grimshaw said. “I said, ‘Hey, you need researchers, but they don’t exist, and I want to do a code camp, so let’s do a code camp and I will create researchers here for you.”

Another main component of the camp is language learning, which Grimshaw is one of the first big pushes for Indigenous language-based AI research, called First Languages AI Reality or FLAIR.

Over the second week, Indigenous language researchers visited the camp to teach students about their learning and experience. One of the goals of the program is to be able to teach language-based AI to recognize Indigenous languages and promote learning.

The cultural aspect of the program is something that drew in rising senior Aiden Tunnissen, Oglala. This was Tunnissen’s first year at the camp.

“If you’re Indigenous, try and learn about your culture because you never know if it could just go away in a flash,” Tunnissen said. “You have to try and do what we’re doing to revive the language. Stick with the people and with your culture.”

Eventually, Grimshaw said he hopes to have an app that will promote conversation and bridge the gap between learning when no fluent speakers or elders are present.

“It’s sort of an elder in a box,” Grimshaw said. “The simplest form is that it might be a pronunciation guide, so it can hear you speak and make suggestions, and the other would be in the very far future, but something that you can converse with.”

Coupling language with programming is a multi-part project. The first week of the program teaches students a basic understanding of Python and data science. By the end of the first week, students create a prediction-based AI which they used this year to predict movie revenue.

The first weekend, students go out into the Black Hills to hike and learn about traditional plant medicines from a knowledge keeper, Linda Black Elk. At the end of week two, the students build a model that can identify plants from pictures taken during their hike.

“We are incorporating that historic cultural knowledge so they can learn more about their own ancestors,” Grimshaw said.

Sometimes these AI models may break, it may confuse one grassy plant for another, but this is all part of the learning process.

“I’m always impressed by the intuition that they get, they just seem to really understand how things work and they’re really smart,” Grimshaw said. “They surprise us all the time, honestly.”

In the final week, students combine everything that they have learned to create an app that helps them speak Lakota. The created app can recognize something, like a chair, and tell the user the Lakota name of that object.

Access to broadband internet services are limited on reservations and Alaska Native villages, something that the camp takes into consideration.

“Only 24-40 percent of Native households have reliable internet,” Grimshaw said. “So in this space students get a laptop and are able to run things on the cloud.”

On top of free camp tuition, students are equipped with free Alienware laptops and Samsung phones so they can continue their education after the three weeks end.

On the last day of the camp, students demonstrate what they’ve learned to community members and their families.

Xavier LaPointe, Sicangu and Oglala, is the youngest student this year, he just finished eighth grade. LaPointe said he was drawn to the camp by a desire to understand something he wasn’t familiar with, coding.

“I remember my first day seeing everyone’s computer because I was in the last row and there was so much happening, typing and stuff,” LaPointe said. “I was so confused because I didn’t get it, but now I know what a lot of it means. I’m still learning, though.”

This year was Niesha Marshall’s, Sicangu Lakota, second year attending the program. Marshall, a rising sophomore in high school, said she really enjoyed last year’s program and wanted to come back and learn more.

“You get to make new friends and overall just have fun,” Marshall said.

Partnership and funding for the program is supplied by the Patrick McGovern Foundation with support from META, but the directors are hoping to also begin to build funding from local businesses as well and create a more localized program.

This story is co-published by the Rapid City Journal and ICT, a news partnership that covers Indigenous communities in the South Dakota area