Amplifying Expertise and Relational Perspectives Reflections from the CEVAW workshop on Generative AI

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Xueyin Zha, Australian National University

March 2026

At a time when avoiding AI in research feels increasingly untenable, CEVAW’s workshop on generative AI offered a timely intervention. Across the day, two seemingly contrasting orientations emerged: a critical, ethically grounded interrogation of AI’s impacts, and a pragmatic exploration of its potential to enhance research practice. Rather than being in tension, I came to see that they delivered just the right messages we needed to hear.

That message, as I understand it, is this: we need to consider the ethics of using these tools—grounding decisions in the tangible impacts each AI query has on our environment and humanity—while also remaining attentive to how they can enhance our learning and agency as researchers. The challenge is to hold both commitments together simultaneously.

The morning keynote and workshop, led by Indigenous scholars Dr Tamika Worrell and Distinguished Professor Bronwyn Carlson, offered a powerful reframing through a relational lens grounded in Indigenous expertise. They asked what it might mean for AI to support, rather than erode, a relational future. Their analysis of generative AI as an extension of colonial extraction—captured in the concept of algorithmic settler colonialism[1]—was both confronting and clarifying. AI systems, as they showed, can reproduce longstanding patterns of exploitation: through data extraction, mis/dis-information, surveillance, and the ongoing exclusion of Indigenous communities from decisions that directly affect them.

They also foregrounded the necessity of Indigenous governance and leadership in shaping AI systems, and invited reflection on our individual responsibilities.[2] One question has stayed with me: what will each of us do to resist data colonialism and its consequences?

I left with a sharpened ethical awareness. A relational perspective asks us to attend not only to outcomes but to relationships, including the labour displaced by AI and the need to uphold digital sovereignty, cultural integrity, and community-defined priorities. More immediately, Dr Worrell’s prompt lingers with me. Every query we enter into a chatbot carries a material cost, drawing on water and energy often sourced from Indigenous lands. This reframes even small, routine uses of AI chatbot as decisions with ethical weight.[3] It prompts a simple question: is this use necessary?

The second half of the day—led by creative technologist Dr. Carl Knox—offered a striking contrast. His workshop encourages us to use generative AI to enhance research. In this framing, AI does not replace expertise—it amplifies it. His advice on transparency offers a useful heuristic on how to maintain integrity and intellectual ownership:

“Know how you got to where you are. If you aren’t proud of what you did in the end, then you have probably given away too much agency.” – Dr.  Carl Knox

What ultimately connects the two halves of the workshop, despite their differing tones, is a shared insistence that ethics and intention must remain in the driving seat. This workshop has helped me make more conscious decisions about aligning my use of AI with my ethical commitments, while sustaining a hopeful outlook toward a more humane, relational future—with AI as a companion rather than an adversary.

References:

[1] See: Worrell, T and B. Carlson (2025) Indigenous AI Futures: Uncle Chatty Gee, Aunty Lexi, and Algorithmic Settler Colonialism

 SomatechnicsVolume 15, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.3366/soma.2025.0468

[1] Barrowcliffe, R., Hutchinson, B., Abdilla, A., Acres, L., Beetson, B., Bell, A., Benton, P., Bligh, B., Bowen, R., Burton, N., Carlson, B., Cawthorne, R., Cook, B., Farrell, A., Fay, D., Fejo, J., Fewster, J., Gray, N., Hackman, D., … Wright, S. (2025). Envisioning Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander AI Futures Communique: March 2025. Journal of Global Indigeneity, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.54760/001c.133656

[1] Worrell, T., & Johns, D. (2024). Indigenous considerations of the potential harms of generative AI. Agora, 59(2), 33–36. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.T2024070500013200755488162

 

Xueyin Zha’s  participation in this workshop in Brisbane was partially supported by the ARC Centre of Excellence on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEVAW #CE230100004).

Read Zha’s and other CEVAW ECR  reflections on this workshop here: GenAI for Social Science Research Workshop Reflections | CEVAW

And her research profile here: Xueyin Zha | Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs

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