© 2025 AIxDesign
© 2025 AIxDesign
© 2025 AIxDesign
Ancestral AI
Ancestral AI
Introduction
Ancestral AI challenges us to slow down, zoom out, look back, and see AI not as ‘new’ or a complete break from the past, but as part of a continuum. It moves beyond the extractive logic of speed and scarcity, searching for a vision of AI rooted in inter-generational care, responsibility, and collective wisdom. Drawing on ancestral data collection, sharing, and decision-making technologies, Ancestral AI explores how alternative temporalities—relational, cyclical, and non-linear—may reshape how we think about and approach AI.
Timeline
March 2024 - February 2025
Team
Research Lead
Gustavo Nogueira de Menezes
Artist
Thiago Britto
Communications
Dominika Čupková
Elena Zaghis
Communications Support
Shweta Bindu Allam
Calligramme Artist
Ana Marques
Team
Nadia Piet
Ploipailin Flynn
Sofia Vieira
Zine Partner
Internet Teapot
Graphic Designer
Kaashvi Kothari
Funding
Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie
Introduction
Ancestral AI challenges us to slow down, zoom out, look back, and see AI not as ‘new’ or a complete break from the past, but as part of a continuum. It moves beyond the extractive logic of speed and scarcity, searching for a vision of AI rooted in inter-generational care, responsibility, and collective wisdom. Drawing on ancestral data collection, sharing, and decision-making technologies, Ancestral AI explores how alternative temporalities—relational, cyclical, and non-linear—may reshape how we think about and approach AI.
Timeline
March 2024 - February 2025
Team
Research Lead
Gustavo Nogueira de Menezes
Artist
Thiago Britto
Communications
Dominika Čupková
Elena Zaghis
Communications Support
Shweta Bindu Allam
Calligramme Artist
Ana Marques
Team
Nadia Piet
Ploipailin Flynn
Sofia Vieira
Zine Partner
Internet Teapot
Graphic Designer
Kaashvi Kothari
Funding
Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie
What we made
The Ancestral AI chapter invites us to rethink the timeline of AI development — showing how modern data practices could integrate ancestral values like community, reciprocity, and collective memory.
From Polynesian navigation systems to knotted-string devices, the chapter highlights approaches that treat data not as a resource to be extracted, but as a form of heritage to be preserved and enriched over time. Challenging the idea that progress lies only ahead, Ancestral AI argues for moving beyond short-term metrics of “success” and “innovation” to consider the long-term impact of AI systems across generations.
Pasts, Presents, Futures - A zine about Ancestral AI made in collaboration with Internet Teapot
This zine compiles the creative contributions, exchanges, and discussions from the Ancestral AI Zine-making Workshop held on August 10, 2024, at the Stadsarchief Amsterdam. In this workshop, we drew inspiration from decolonial theory, the wisdom and practices from past generations, and our own situated experiences and histories.
The Sea Dreamed of Me by Thiago Britto
What dreams might have crossed the Atlantic before Columbus? What memories live in our bodies that history books have forgotten? These questions ripple through “The Sea Dreamed of Me,” a four-part film by Brazilian artist Thiago Britto. Unfolding along the Bantu-Kongo cosmogram, the story reimagines Black travel to the Americas — drifting through the webs of time in cycles rather than lines.
“The Sea Dreamed of Me” is a work of critical fabulation that treats AI as “synthetic memory.” By crafting prompts that subvert algorithmic biases, Thiago moves beyond colonial narratives to produce images of Black freedom.
Conversation on Ancestral AI
As part of the Ancestral AI research, we spoke to Monique Lemos and Thiago Britto. How can ancestral knowledge shape the future of AI? What might it mean to be a good AI ancestor?
