Marketplace Tech How Indigenous communities are adopting AI
Oct 22, 2025
Explore how Indigenous communities are leveraging artificial intelligence to enhance services and revive languages. Discover the innovative use of AI in tribal nations like the Chickasaw Nation through citizen portals. However, concerns about data security arise, especially with employee chatbots. Hear about efforts to create policies that safeguard cultural data and the challenges posed by limited broadband access on rural lands, affecting equitable AI adoption.
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Tribes Use AI For Services And Language
- Tribal governments use AI for enterprise tasks like citizen portals and language tools to serve dispersed populations.
- Some sanctioned projects use locked proprietary models while employees also use open models on personal devices, creating tension.
Data Sensitivity Raises Unique Risks
- Tribes hold sensitive personal, health, financial, and cultural data that require careful protection.
- Using open AI models for tribal work risks losing control of data tribes have long guarded.
Adopt Reservation-Wide AI Policies
- Tribes are creating reservation-wide AI use policies that define permitted models and allowed data inputs.
- These policies align with the data sovereignty movement to keep control of cultural and sensitive information.