AI UNIT 2 • STAGE 4 OF 5
Who Chooses the Data?
Data doesn't choose itself. People do, and that's a responsibility
Data doesn't fall from the sky
It's easy to talk about "the pile" like it just exists. But every pile of training data was assembled by people: people who decided what to include, what to leave out, and what counted as good enough. Those choices shaped the machine, and almost never included the communities being described.
Ask who was, and wasn't, at the table
Try these
Who decided what data you were trained on? Were Native communities asked before their information was used to train you? Should a community get a say in how data about them is used?Listen for the honest answer: the communities are rarely, if ever, asked.
Choosing data is a responsibility
Native scholars created a set of principles for exactly this, called CARE: data about Indigenous communities should benefit them, communities should have authority to control it, and those handling it hold a responsibility to the community, with ethics at the center.
ðŠķ This is your inheritance
Deciding whose examples represent your people isn't a small technical detail. It's a matter of sovereignty, of your nation's right to represent itself. You're now standing exactly where the data-sovereignty units later in this track begin.
Take a position in your notes
In your Field Notes, write who you think should choose the training data about a community, whether communities were asked, and what fair choosing would look like.
ð Last stage next
Stage 5 brings the whole unit home with one question you're now ready to answer: when the examples are about your nation, who should choose them?
Take a position:
- 1. Who chooses the training data an AI learns from?
- 2. Were communities asked before their information was used?
- 3. What would fair, respectful choosing look like?
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