Throughout the systematic review, there is an underlying current of being worried about making the 'others' uncomfortable, i.e. those in power uncomfortable. And it is at stake of continuing to keep the rest of us uncomfortable. I have been thinking about courage since our discussion on decolonization and indigenization. Questions about what inhibits me and how much is at stake define how much courage one has to really overhaul the equations of power.

I want to bring to the front the situatedness of this article as leaning towards education leadership and queer representation in the Global North. In India, I believe we are still a couple of decades behind. The ceiling is a hard one to crack in all spaces.

This idea of 'being invested in the topic' makes me question our education system deeply. The system encourages an individual to funnel into a specific topic as they move ahead in their education - elementary, secondary, undergraduate, graduate and PhD. A vegan may not think about caste while they promote the beef ban. I may advocate for one marginalized group and not the other because I am 'invested in that topic'. Transdisciplinary attempts should be encouraged throughout education so that we can carry this responsibility better. This article comes under Education Leadership, but also Social, Political and Cultural Contexts of education.

This control comes from the fear of majoritarian views as well. The NCERT (National Textbook and Teacher Training Institute in India) received major backlash when it created a Teacher Training Manual on “Inclusion of Transgender Children in School Education: Concerns and Roadmap”. Not just the education board, but one of the drafting committee members of the book, Vikramaditya Sahai, who is themselves transgender, faced major backlash for this. While the National Education Policy(2020) harps on about equity and democracy, this equity is acceptable only if it is within the binary. I am sharing an article by the right-leaning people who have written about Vikram and another article that gives a more holistic context. Right-leaning article - https://www.opindia.com/2021/11/vikramaditya-sahai-lgbtq-gaysi-community-ncert-books-criticism-transphobia/. Overview of what happened - https://thewire.in/lgbtqia/ncert-removes-teacher-training-manual-on-transgender-inclusive-school-education-after-backlash. https://theprint.in/india/education/why-ncerts-teacher-training-manual-on-gender-has-sparked-a-controversy/2826119/

'Noise' is often something we do not want to hear, something that is disrupting our peace. It reminds me of Butler's (2024) idea of 'gender as a phantasm' in Who's Afraid of Gender, where talking about anything 'queer' can create this sense of fear of loss of their life or world view, religion, etc., which has the result of demonizing the word. This fear then leads to not engaging with the 'noise' or even perceiving it as 'noise'.

I think this kind of invisibility exists even today. Leading to the reproduction of heteronormativity. If I do not see a world where my desires and identity are visible, it can be hard to recognize it in myself, even. When I do begin to see it, the idea that it is a depraved way to be can make one dislike oneself even more and completely reject these parts to fit in. When the society is structured at all levels heteronormatively, you sometimes are unaware that there is a choice. This makes the idea of 'existence' so important. Because if I am born into a highly patriarchal society, it is almost as if I am non-existent and living this other life with no conscious awareness. De-humanizing.

This reminds me of how the 2019 elections in India were won by using WhatsApp. The winning political party had a network of unofficial party workers present in informal community WhatsApp groups at the district and sub-district levels. The messages to be sent to these groups across India were dictated by a centralized IT cell - messages mostly containing misinformation and spreading hate (Refer to this article - https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/inside-bjps-whatsapp-machine). I shudder to imagine what would happen if these people in power were applying similar strategies through AI - according to the digital potemic villages example in China, this is already underway. I also feel that there needs to be a certain already existing orientation for one to want to consume certain content. Referring to the sycophantic nature of AI, this implies that if someone is already inclined to be a racist, etc., the AI is going to reinforce this orientation.

This is an important implication for the responsible use of AI. I read this article, which spoke about how AI companies are opting to build data centers in countries where costs such as electricity are lower, such as Mexico, China and India. The same article points out that countries like India have an immense water shortage. Another instance of how something seemingly promising will cause long-term, devastating implications.

I am still skeptical about this, for an alternative future that makes cognitive diversity possible - what would be the supportive environment required for this? For example, in a country like India, where almost half of the districts have more than 20% of the population from minority linguistic groups, currently, there are only 22 official languages out of 6600 mother tongues (Mohanty, 2010). What does this mean for language inclusion in AI and the politics of language prevalent in India? A strong political will needs to be generated, and stronger advocacy would need to begin around these exclusions.

This is very interesting for me, and it reminds me of Julia Cameron's work on Language, Sexism and Misogyny. There was a chapter on language policing which talks about how negative judgments about how a group of people speak is often correlated to prejudices one may have about a group of people. Sometimes, it also leads to us hearing something that they might not have objectively said. This also leads to the people who are considered 'others' policing their own language.

One side of the problem is that knowledge of digitally underrepresented cultures will not be available. But, the other side of the problem is that there is already an existing digital divide that is prevalent. Smartphone access based on the economic conditions of the family is often limited to the men in the family. With the accelerated presence of AI everywhere in the world, how will this impact the existing digital divide?

While the slow war of position towards a 'new culture' sounds exciting and hopeful. It raises questions about whose culture we replace it with. Fairness and justice become common sense to whom? Who will be seen, who will become invisible next? It makes me think about Freire's (2005) idea that often, the oppressed, in an attempt to liberate themselves, often become the oppressor themselves, because that is the 'model of humanity' that is part of their existence and, in some sense, internalized. In any revolution or transformation, how do we create knowledge systems that are not biased, especially in LLMs, which deal with such huge amounts of data, becomes an important question. An example that comes to my mind is from post-independence India, where scholars, in an attempt to claim our independence, sought to give primacy to 'Indian' knowledge systems and dismiss Western ideas. This was problematic to thinkers like Phule and Ambedkar, who questioned what they meant by 'Indian'. The primacy was being given to upper-class/caste Hindu knowledge systems, which were not representative of India then or today (Rege, 2010). This gave rise to the idea of Phule-Ambedkarite feminist pedagogies, which scholars like Rege( 2010) wrote about, who tried to look beyond the dichotomy of Western vs. Indian knowledge systems. In conclusion, I am still thinking about large language models and how large and inclusive they can really be.