Ancestral Intelligence & The Future of AI (Session 1: Pacific / Americas)

​What if artificial intelligence was not built on extractive logic but instead rooted in ancestral wisdom, deep time, and kinship?

​This session reimagines AI through the lens of ancestral intelligence—drawing from Afrofuturism, Indigenous epistemologies, and queer lineages to challenge hypernormalize algorithmic capitalism, toward infusing technology with care, compassion, and connection.

​We challenge the dominant narratives of AI as a tool of productivity and control, proposing instead an inversion: ancestral intelligence as a "virus" that rewires AI’s philosophical foundations.  

We explore how ancestral knowledge—suppressed by colonialism and categorical normativities—can realign AI with human and planetary values. How does ancestral intelligence open up our horizons of imagination?

• ​What does work mean in a post-productivism world?

• ​How can an imagination economy or an ancestral intelligence economy redefine value beyond labor and extraction?

​By engaging with deep time, anthropology and ancestral knowledge we can uncover frameworks of relationality that offer radical alternatives to AI’s current trajectory.  Ancestral intelligence opens spaces for kinship, care, and futures where technology amplifies, rather than erases, the wisdom of the past.

This session will blend discussion, speculative design, and interactive play.

​After a grounding introduction (20 min), we collaboratively map frameworks for ancestral intelligence in AI development (40 min), asking: How might neuroscience, storytelling, or games channel this wisdom?

​The final 30 minutes feature an ancestral intelligence "artifact" game—Afrorithms of the future— a tactile exploration of how ritual, memory, and community can reshape technology.

​Hosts: Dr. Lonny Brooks, Dr. Jose Ramos, Dr. Steven Lichty

​Image by: Raul Cruz https://www.artstation.com/artwork/xzqzJR