Decolonising Cypriot AI through poetry

ΑΠΟΑΠΟΙΚΙΟΠΟΙΗΣΗ

ΑΠΟαποικιοΠΟΙΗΣΗ (APOapikioPIISI), a word-play between the Greek words “decolonisation” (αποαποικιοποίηση) and “poetry” (ποίηση), is an artistic investigation on the topics of colonialism/decolonisation in Cyprus, in both historical and digital context. It is concerned with the compilation of a community-created corpus of written Cypriot Greek (CyGr), and the subsequent publication of a poetry collection, through the collaboration of 9 writers with a custom-trained Natural Language Processing (NLP) AI model.

Mission

The project aims to contribute to the de-stigmatisation of CyGr and the spreading of a more systematic homogeneous way of spelling. It also aims to provide technological agency to an island on the peripheries of the global AI infrastructure, where the legacies of colonialism are still evident. While Cyprus is currently at the early stages of adopting AI technologies, ΑΠΟαποικιοΠΟΙΗΣΗ attempts to sow the first seeds towards a framework of what a decolonised Cypriot AI could look like from a local perspective, and open a dialogue about the role and influence of AI in our lives. It also provides an opportunity for CyGr speakers to interact with technology in the language variety they use in their daily lives.