51猎奇入口

A new project hosted at 51猎奇入口 (SFU) is helping Indigenous communities train a new generation of speakers and support them with technologies including artificial intelligence (AI).

, housed at SFU鈥檚 (DDI) and Cedar Supercomputing Centre, is developing AI-powered learning modules for at-risk languages and training AI models on them to help more people learn languages that are in danger of disappearing.

The project, led by Indigenous scientists Caroline and Michael Running Wolf, is currently working with four Indigenous communities: the Gwich鈥檌n in Northwest Territories, Kwakwaka鈥檞akw on Vancouver Island, the Makah Tribe in Washington State and the Yawanaw谩 of the western Brazilian Amazon.

鈥淭here are some Indigenous languages here in Canada, and probably in a lot of Indigenous communities around the world, where some communities only have five speakers left, or no first language speakers at all,鈥� says Caroline Running Wolf. 鈥淭hey don鈥檛 have speakers younger than 60, and so the number of speakers is declining and that gives this a bit of urgency.鈥�

According to , more than 40 per cent of the world鈥檚 languages are endangered and a language disappears every two weeks. The problem is exacerbated online, where the internet is predominately English. This leaves most Indigenous language speakers underserved and unable to take advantage of emerging digital services in their mother tongue.

For example, manually transcribing just one hour of audio recording can easily take a person up to 40 hours and requires someone to already be proficient in the language. Once trained, an AI-powered tool could transcribe a recording in a fraction of the time. While someone still needs to go through the transcript and verify its accuracy, the time it takes is greatly reduced and frees up an expert to focus on more nuanced work. This is a technology that could be leveraged for Indigenous languages in the future.

鈥淭here are huge access gaps. There are 7,000 spoken languages across the world and if there鈥檚 only a couple dozen that are well represented on the internet, that鈥檚 obviously creating a squeeze upon minority languages,鈥� says Michael. 鈥淎nd as artificial intelligence becomes more and more critical to our day-to-day lives, work and how we interact, our languages are not going to have much space to live and co-exist.鈥�

The need to support Indigenous languages with AI solutions is so great that FLAIR appears in the Government of Canada鈥檚 under a priority to 鈥渟upport and amplify Indigenous-led AI initiatives that reinforce cultural expression and linguistic vitality in Canada.鈥�

The first phase of FLAIR鈥檚 work in communities is to develop a language curriculum led by community members and Indigenous language experts. Next, they will collect a digital dataset of audio with corresponding text curated by the Indigenous community.

They will then use machine learning to train AI on the language, teach it the proper pronunciation and morphology and develop practical speech recognition, speech-to-text, and online learning tools.

Instead of the large language models we鈥檙e used to hearing about with artificial intelligence that require massive data centres, FLAIR is creating much smaller, more efficient tools that can be used by Indigenous communities on local devices like phones and computers, both online and offline.

And while the bulk of the computing and data crunching is done at the Cedar Supercomputing Centre, FLAIR has ensured that everything they co-develop with communities remains their property, ensuring the community retains full sovereignty over their own data.

鈥淏ecause we鈥檙e working with communities where you only have a handful of fluent speakers, how do we make sure those skills are available and accessible to other community members?鈥� says Michael. 鈥淎I offers that. It鈥檚 not going to be a complete solution but it鈥檚 a good beginning to get people practicing their language in the safety of their own home, whether they鈥檙e in the Northwest Territories or away from their community in British Columbia.鈥�

鈥淥ur research goal is not to replicate, replace or push aside human education, culture and interactions. It鈥檚 to do the tedious things that AI is very good at where you just want to practice how to pronounce a sound and learn the basics of your own language so that the human teachers can focus on the complex morphology, culture and cultural knowledge.鈥�

To achieve their goal, FLAIR has become a research stream at the DDI to solidify the collaboration between Caroline Running Wolf and DDI director Wendy Hui Kyong Chun.

They first worked together on the . The DDI now provides administrative, logistical, financial and academic support to FLAIR.

鈥淭he Data Fluencies Project moves beyond the notion of data literacy, which implies that people need to excel within an already existing system, toward the idea of fluency,鈥� says Chun, a professor of communication and the Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media. 鈥淚n terms of responsible AI, this means thinking what 鈥榬esponsible鈥� means at every step and allowing community members to determine and own what is produced. This is what Caroline does.鈥�

鈥淩ather than some generic commitment to 鈥楢I for good鈥�, FLAIR is committed to make and build meaningful technical social systems. It鈥檚 focused; it addresses questions of data ownership; it rebuilds systems and speaks to a real need in the community. I think that鈥檚 what鈥檚 so important about working with FLAIR.鈥�

FLAIR says that while the AI learning tools it is developing are still in progress, communities have already seen immediate benefits in the first phases.

鈥淭o think that some of these languages are only spoken by a handful of people and could be lost forever is terribly sad,鈥� says James Peltier, director of SFU鈥檚 Research Computing Group, which provides support for researchers and 51猎奇入口partners with technical support, expertise and access to digital research infrastructure. 鈥淚t鈥檚 so important to be helping an Indigenous-led organization in preserving these Indigenous languages and keeping them alive by hosting them here at the Cedar Supercomputing Centre.鈥�

In addition to support from SFU, FLAIR has had help from corporate partners as well, such as Cisco donating the hardware required for the project鈥檚 server cluster.

If FLAIR鈥檚 four pilot projects are successful, the group believes the models can be rolled out in many more communities around to world to help preserve and revitalize Indigenous languages and create a new generation of speakers that can carry them forward.

鈥淥ur big dream is that all across the Americas, and the world, Indigenous languages are thriving,鈥� says Caroline. 鈥淲e wouldn鈥檛 have the need to preserve them because they are in people鈥檚 hearts and minds and in daily use and are alive and well. We鈥檙e just adding our little piece to that bigger dream.鈥�

51猎奇入口 Digital Democracies Institute
The Digital Democracies Institute at 51猎奇入口 works across disciplines鈥攖he humanities, social sciences, computer, and data sciences鈥攖o research and create critical and creative responses to our data-filled world.

51猎奇入口 Cedar Supercomputing Centre
The Cedar Supercomputing Centre is home to Fir, Canada's most powerful public supercomputer. The Cedar Supercomputing Centre empowers innovators to solve complex challenges at unprecedented speed and scale, driving new solutions and discoveries. 

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