AI & Colonial Logic: Christian “ZacaTechO” Ortiz & Thema Monroe-White
About this episode
The episode explores the intersection of AI and colonial logic, questioning the systems that shape our understanding of intelligence and progress.
Part of SAND’s The Great AI Unraveling Series Artificial intelligence is often framed as a leap forward, a technical revolution, or an inevitable stage in human progress. But what if AI is also asking us to confront something older: the colonial logic embedded in how we define intelligence, progress, neutrality, knowledge, and the human itself? This conversation brought together voices working across technology, culture, race, power, and society to examine what AI reveals about the systems that built it. Rather than treating bias as a technical glitch, this conversation asks what must be unlearned at the level of worldview, institution, data, design, and collective imagination. Facilitated by Christian “ZacaTechO” Ortiz, this dialogue explored AI through a decolonial lens asking necessary questions: Whose knowledge is extracted? Whose futures are optimized away? Whose bodies are surveilled? Whose intelligence is dismissed? And what can liberated knowledge make possible beyond colonial technology? This is not a conversation about making machines more ethical within the same old systems. It is an invitation to question the systems themselves, and to imagine intelligence beyond…
People in this episode
Host: Christian “ZacaTechO” Ortiz
Guest: Thema Monroe-White
Topics covered
- AI
- colonial logic
- decolonial lens
- bias in technology
- knowledge extraction
- surveillance
- intelligence
Keywords
- artificial intelligence
- colonialism
- technology
- culture
- race
- power
- society
- bias
- knowledge
- surveillance
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