Digital Acculturation: A Paradigm Shift in the Era of Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

With the advent of Artificial Intelligence, the development of digital acculturation was started. It includes individuals and community’s acceptance, adaption, negotiation and internalization of digital technologies and the cultural norms. This has got inculcated within various stake holders over the time and resulted into acculturation (digital integration) as a whole. Kerala is the India's first state to be 100% digitally literate. This was accomplished through the state-wide Digi Keralam initiative, which was aimed to reach the community level, to ensure everyone’s participation invariable of their age and internet skills. This paper explores the ways in which AI-mediated systems influenced the dynamics and pathways by which individuals learn to be digitally literate, digitally identity, and engage with digitally mediated culture. We review the social constructivist in the view of technology, known as the Social Construction of Technology, (SCOT) and post humanist perspectives, and draw on the ideas of acculturation theory to examine the effects of algorithmic curation, generative content tools and personalized recommendation engines on patterns of cultural transmission and social cohesion. The study highlights some of the paradoxes that have arisen in this paradigm shift: cultural homogenization and hyper-individualized content silos; greater agency in creating content and reliance on opaque algorithmic gatekeepers; and global connectivity and cementing inequalities in access to and representation in AI technologies. The Ethical issues of AI-assisted collecting, such as cultural appropriation of indigenous knowledge, and the loss of common culture and public culture, are considered and examined. This paper proposes a reimagining of digital collecting in the age of AI, one that should consider the co-creation of meaning between humans and machines and the need for policy measures to protect cultural diversity, access, and individual agency in an increasingly algorithmically-mediated world.