Wi-Fi and the Wisdom Exchange: The Role of Lived Experience in the Age of AI

Abstract

The ubiquitousness of Artificial intelligence (AI) now grows faster than a weed in a garden patch. This momentum frequently raises questions about how to implement inclusivity and ethical research standards. It also suggests the need to integrate lived experience rather than taking only the shortcut to AI's information highway. We wonder, Does the nature of technology present geographic bias? As we speed up the process of "knowing," do we lose a bank of knowledge based on natural observations and shared intentions? This paper examines the nature of AI's Socratic conversations compared with the communications invoked by global grassroots research study, to evaluate how each can contribute unique pathways linking science to social science. Pivoting around AI's summary of four water-conservation practices, survey questions were sent to seven locations in Sub-Saharan Africa where direct onsite farm research projects emphasized relationships between nature's processes and local quality of life. The results shed new perspectives on the value of supplementing formal online data with communications derived from grassroots sources – and the resulting implications for global knowledge and the sustainability of human systems.