The Future of Language

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I think it's fascinating to like read about that experience and reading about that kind of competition that you held in order to get all of this language data. And one of the things that stood out to me too was that there was kind of a distinction in one of the pieces that you wrote between kind of a more contemporary Maori, influenced by the New Zealand English versus more of a native Maori. That's the ultimate goal here, I think, with these language tools is how do we bring back the native sound or we want to bring back thenative sound.

Paris Marx is joined by Keoni Mahelona to discuss the colonial nature of data extraction by major tech companies, and how Te Hiku takes a very different approach to revitalize the Māori language.

Keoni Mahelona is the Chief Technology Officer at Te Hiku Media. Follow Keoni on Twitter at @mahelona.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Keoni and some of his colleagues wrote about why OpenAI’s Whisper is another example of colonialism.
Wired and MIT Tech Review have written about the work Te Hiku is doing with Māori language in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Mark Zuckerberg owns a lot of land in Hawaiʻi, and it’s quite controversial.

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