Wayuunaiki, Wayuwaa, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). The Living Loom of the Word

Abstract

A reflection is proposed on the design and use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) from a Wayuu ontological perspective, grounded in the cultural practice of naming elements that arrive in the territory and in the pedagogical value of origin narratives associated with each of them within the Wayuu people. The objective is to offer criteria for the engagement with AI that recognize the centrality of orality and Indigenous epistemologies, avoiding their subordination to external technological logics, as has previously occurred with the imposition of Spanish orthography and with certain orthographic proposals for Indigenous languages. The research was conducted through a methodology based on bibliographic review and theoretical analysis, drawing on the morphology of the folktale, narrative semiotics, and the notion of shokoto, understood as the living weave of the word. As a contribution, the study advances an intercultural reading of Artificial Intelligence that enters into dialogue with wayuunaiki and wayuwaa, situating technology within a symbolic and narrative framework intrinsic to the Wayuu worldview. It is concluded that the incorporation of Artificial Intelligence in Indigenous educational contexts requires a respectful approach to ancestral knowledge systems, in which technology is understood as part of a symbolic and narrative process, rather than as a mechanism that reorders or displaces oral knowledge systems.