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This timely edited volume challenges the potentially simplistic blame narratives surrounding artificial intelligence (AI), urging instead a shared ethical responsibility among users, researchers, policymakers, and others.
Rejecting the notion of AI as an autonomous 'evil', the book interrogates how human choices embedded in power structures, colonial legacies, and ideological frameworks can shape AI's impact on intercultural relations. Through decolonial critiques, dialogic experiments, and perspectives from the Global South, the contributors expose algorithmic biases, epistemic injustices, and governance gaps, while advocating for collective agency. From African Ubuntu ethics to Moroccan linguistic and cultural equity, and the political economy of creative industries, the book portrays AI as a mirror of human complexities and contradictions rather than a scapegoat.
A vital resource for students and scholars of intercultural communication education and research, this book calls for reflexive engagement with AI, emphasising co-accountability over unfounded dread.
List of contents
1. Fearing our own reflections in AI
Part I: Foundations - AI, Interculturality and Ideology 2. Speaking back to AI (and ourselves): Generative epistemic (in)justice in intercultural communication education 3.
Magic mirror on the wall, who is the evilest ideologue of all? AI, interculturality
and/or we, the users
...? 4. Coloniality of artificiality: Ontological critique and AI as critical interculturalist?
Part II: Decolonial Interventions - Beyond 'Western' AI? 5. AI and intercultural communication: Cultural nuances beyond theoretical constraints 6. In search of justifiable AI governance for Africa 7. African Ubuntu, relational being and AI 8. Cultural futures: Governance, cultural policy and the political economy of AI in the Creative and Cultural Industries
About the author
Fred Dervin is a world-renowned interculturalist who has made a strong impact on Intercultural Communication Education and Research over the past 25 years. A Full Professor at the University of Helsinki (Finland), Dervin proposes original and refreshing approaches to understanding the politics of global interactions by challenging conventional paradigms and blending interdisciplinary insights. His work aims to inspire practitioners, researchers, and students to rethink and reshape the notion of interculturality. With over 300 publications, Dervin is included in the Stanford Elsevier List of the world's best scientists.
Hamza R'boul is a fellow at the Centre for Higher Education Leadership and Policy Studies (CHELPS), The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. His research interests include intercultural education, (higher) education in the Global South, decolonial endeavours in education, cultural politics of language teaching, and postcoloniality.
