Intelligence and Technodiversity

A decade ago, Yuk Hui introduced the concept of cosmotechnics, according to which different cultures have different ways of conceiving of and implementing technology. In later works, he continued to recommend technodiversity as complementary to biodiversity and noodiversity. Today, the rapid development of AI seems headed in the opposite direction. AI is dominated by a small number of companies, in a few locations, and with unequal representation of different languages and imaginaries. Current AI giants, oscillating between modern/capitalist cosmotechnics and new techno-theological eschatologies, are already eroding the noodiversity and biodiversity of the planet.
Several initiatives for diverse and counter-colonial AI have emerged, but these face material limitations linked to the concentration of compute and the unequal availability of training data, pointing to deeper economic and geopolitical challenges. At the same time, centralized paradigms in AI development are being challenged by the observation that intelligence emerges from swarms of diverse agents interacting with each other. This raises the question of whether centralization is indeed a technical imperative, or a strategy for concentrating power.

Although Hui’s latest book focuses on AI, it does not mention cosmotechnics or technodiversity, leaving the relationship between intelligence and different cosmologies open to interpretation. This symposium will focus on that question, exploring debates on Chinese and Aztec cosmotechnics, artificial wisdom, and the potential of embedding spaces to support non-Western cosmologies.