Māori AI Ethics

Introduction What is a Taonga Tikanga –Whakapapa – Mauri – Wairua Traditional Knowledge Loss of customary knowledge Data Sovereignty of DNA samples Digital Colonisation Tikanga Test Links of Interest References Download the paper in pdf Introduction This paper was originally written in direct response to the Law Commission’s public consultation (and forms a part of … Read more

I was interviewed to contribute a Māori perspective to the The Artificial Intelligence Forum of New Zealand (AIFNZ) inaugural report. It appears as though only my statement was published with no acknowledgements. In the whole report Māori is only considered in the  Part Three: AI and Society, Artificial Intelligence Shaping a Future New Zealand. The … Read more

This analysis uses two apps offered by Te Wānanga o Aotearoa and looks at their tikanga and privacy issues. The purpose of the article is to raise awareness of traditional knowledge being used to create new ideas to attract youth Māori to new initiatives such as education and being proud to be Māori. Their third … Read more

A presentation given to the BSidesWLG 2017 conference on Māori cultural ethical considerations in Information Security (infosec). The point of the presentation was to very broadly and at a high level touch on private and government infosec communities to raise awareness of tikanga Māori issues. The presentation is available here. BSidesWLG is a diverse and inclusive information … Read more

Identifying ancestry and family links with a person’s tribal affiliations and whakapapa (genealogy) to the land via pepeha (formulaic expression of ancestral connections) is one of the most common and integral forms of identification in the Māori world: hence the common question “Nō hea koe?” translated as “Where are you from?” This scoping report will … Read more

Digitising whakapapa records and images of tipuna to be shared on the Internet is increasingly becoming common practice without any discussion about the consequences. Internet protection agencies such as NetSafe have no cultural resources to advise Maori of potential issues. Whakapapa and tipuna images including images of the dead, that are accessed via wifi Internet … Read more

The terms ‘tribal member’ and ‘hapū member’ are colonial terms with a number of detrimental connotations. Many Indigenous Peoples of the world have suffered the same fate with colonial and derogatory terms to describe them. The definition of the word ‘tribal’ includes a division of a barbarous race of people. The definition of the word … Read more

Digitising images of ancestors, taonga and places of cultural value and then sharing the image with whanau and friends on the Internet is common, as it is quick and easy to share with multiple people with just a few clicks of a button. Regularly I see ancestor images at marae being photographed on someones smart … Read more

The definition of a keyboard warrior is often used by non technically literate people as a derogatory term applied to online trolls/cyberbully and people who are online activists using technology to fight and raise concerns for a cause. Warrior is a term often reserved for elite special forces, learned people of fighting arts and experts of contact sports. … Read more

The digital age has many unknown consequences for Māori culture and history. I question if we need to be our own ethnographers in this rapidly changing digital world? Writing whakapapa or other important information for future generations in the sand at the low tide mark with no other record verbal or written is similar to writing a message on … Read more

The nature of the web and digital technologies leads Māori ICT organisations, kupu hou creation, Māori related software, web sites and digital tools to by default, ignore whakapapa in the digital world. I have already spoken widely about tikanga in the digital world on my site. Māori stories from many generations ago remind us of the early … Read more

Media reports censorship of moko images on Facebook and Instagram but some misunderstand which organisation can assist. In one article by Māori Television it states that the Ministry of Culture and Heritage have been approached for comment and it states: Te Kaea is awaiting a response from the Ministry of Culture and Heritage to see whether they will … Read more

Pokémon is a free location-based augmented reality game played on mobile phones which places creatures called Pokemon that can fight each other at randomly selected places including marae, wahi tapu and Urupa. Augmented reality is a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment with a computer or other animation that can be seen … Read more

The free to distribute poster below can be downloaded for free to use in any taonga collection for a library, museum or place that has taonga Māori where food should not be consumed. The poster is in English and Chinese as its original purpose was for the Lincoln University Library where there is a high … Read more

Snapchat is the latest social media company to claim Intellectual Property Rights with your data, pics and info including your voice and facial recognition. Under these Terms of Service, if you had recorded your elder sending family a message does so in a traditional chant, wearing traditional clothes and accessories and the face has traditional tattoo, … Read more

My controversial thoughts about cyber tangi are below so as to raise debate/ideas and to make people think about cyber tangi, or to at least respect the rights of any whanau who want a cyber tangi.   When my children’s mum from Taranaki suddenly and unexpectedly passed away almost three years ago at the age … Read more