Orientalism and Islamophobic artificial intelligence

Orientalism and Islamophobic artificial intelligence

Orientalism and Islamophobic artificial intelligence

https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/columns/orientalism-and-islamophobic-artificial-intelligence

Publish Date: 2026-04-03 17:05:00

Source Domain: www.dailysabah.com

  • Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism indicates the West’s long-standing interpretive and hegemonic control over the East, extending across literature, politics, media, and everyday language.
  • AI technologies, particularly large language models, perpetuate this Orientalist regime by reproducing entrenched societal biases that have been embedded in their training data.
  • The representations generated by AI systems reflect and amplify existing social and cultural biases rather than creating neutral knowledge, demonstrating that Orientalism persists in a more covert yet powerful form.
  • AI’s tendency to associate Muslims with terrorism and other stereotypes originates from historical contexts of Orientalist hegemony and is reinforced by data shaped by Western-centric narratives.
  • Addressing the biases in AI requires a combined effort with both algorithmic and data improvements, underpinned by social structural changes to dismantle the deep-rooted biases that shape datasets.
  • AI’s biases extend beyond technical issues to the realm of social epistemology, indicating it acts as a modern-day perpetuator of an Orientalist hegemony in a digital format.