Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Kultur-, Sozial- und Bildungswissenschaftliche Fakultät - Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin | Kultur-, Sozial- und Bildungswissenschaftliche Fakultät | Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften | ㅤZENTRALASIEN | 05.02. Lecture: Decolonializing AI: Natural Language Processing for Under-Resourced Languages, the Case of Pashto

05.02. Lecture: Decolonializing AI: Natural Language Processing for Under-Resourced Languages, the Case of Pashto

  • Wann 05.02.2026 von 14:15 bis 16:15
  • Wo Room 507, Central Asian Seminar, Invalidenstr. 108 or online via Zoom
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Zoom-Link: https://hu-berlin.zoom-x.de/j/66821386897?pwd=Ae6tudZSiqWv7Vm0lLscU0vWa5756q.1

 

While global AI development continues to privilege so-called “high-resource” languages, many languages spoken across Asia and Africa remain digitally underrepresented. This imbalance reinforces linguistic inequality and restricts participation in emerging digital infrastructures. The talk will question the role of “under-resourced” languages in the field of Artificial Intelligence, particularly within Natural Language Processing (NLP).

 

Using the case of Pashto, the lecture will showcase how community-driven digitalization efforts can challenge these hierarchies. Drawing on a recent women-led speech data initiative, the project demonstrates that under-resourced languages are not inherently technologically limited.

 

The lecture will also highlight the broader socio-political implications of such initiatives, including questions of linguistic sovereignty, access, and the ethical dimensions of digital labor.