The Importance of Indigenous Language in the Maori Context

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Tejiku is building its own kind of AI and language models. It's digitizing tapes that were recorded in the 70s, like actual cassette tapes. As a part of that project, how do we make these old stories more accessible to people who are on their language learning journey? So we have native speakers, one of whom was born in the late 19th century. They're speaking a language that you, it's hard to find today. It's a native sound. And they're using colloquialisms and idioms and all sorts of things that you don't really hear today. There's really only a handful of people who could actually completely transcribe these recordings accurately...

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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