Perspectiva Kogui: A message on artificial intelligence from the Kogui people

andreisag

A statement from the Kogui (Kággaba) people of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia, assembled from the words of Mamo Vangelio Moscote Alberto and Saka Rosa Mamatacán Sauna. José Manuel Mamatacán translated it into Spanish and Christian Horstmann into English. Edit: an earlier source for the same text is this PDF hosted on Movilizatorio's site (a Colombian non-profit), dated September: https://movilizatorio.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Gonawin... . I'm not affiliated with sonidoselva.

Kevin_Flynn

I can't help but think the fact that a pre-columbian tribe would release a commentary on AI, says something important. AI appears to be the new golden calf we are all acknowledging, in some form or another.

bamboozled

I really can't imagine any of the absolute psychopaths running these "AI" companies reading this and going, "yeah, great ideas..." which is a disappointing.

slfnflctd

A lot to think about here, quite poignant. Strange combination of insights, but still (mostly) strikingly coherent, as long-winded as it is. I found myself agreeing with the majority of it. Funny how this will now be part of the material future models are trained on and/or fetching. Perhaps that's a good thing.

vasco

I'd like to see their position on just computers and the internet in general before taking any comments about AI. Maybe they just dislike everything tech anyway. Despite any good points, for example the Unabomber would also oppose AI, but he also opposed most technological progress. And they could be both right on the wider point also, but it's not worth the same if they'd say the same thing about most modern living.

p-e-w

> We have lived here and cared for this mountain before there was a Colombia. So the authors of this “message” are simultaneously trying to claim the spiritual heritage of people who had no connection to the modern world at all, and commenting on the most modern phenomenon in existence. I do wonder how they would react to a machine learning PhD telling them that he is concerned about their beliefs involving a mountain.

rolosa

So I tried to ask the new Siri AI to translate and summarize the page for me but it says it can only summarize what it sees on the screen. Yet it can search through my entire email, messages, photos, and files?

Bluestein

"AN URGENT MESSAGE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FROM THE KOGUI PEOPLE Assembled from the words of Mamo Vangelio Moscote Alberto and Saka Rosa Mamatacán Sauna of the Ezuama Mayor Kuamaka, Translated into Spanish by Jose Manuel Mamatacán, English translation by Christian Horstmann. We come from Gonawindua, la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the mountain in Colombia which we call the heart of the world. We are the Kággaba, whom you know as the Kogui. We have lived here and cared for this mountain before there was a Colombia. We have been here since the Mother gave us our beginning and conferred intelligence upon us. We have come to speak to you about the intelligence you are building. We do not come in opposition. We come because we are concerned, and because we believe we have something to contribute. Before anything can be said about artificial intelligence, we must say something about thought. Before a thing exists as matter, it exists first in thought, and that thought is alive. We call this living thought Aluna. Your religion has described it as a spirit moving upon the face of the waters. Perhaps your science would describe it as the quantum vacuum. Aluna is how we express this type of idea. Aluna is the cosmic water. To us it is living thought: the place where a thing already is, before it takes form or is given mass. Everything comes from there, without exception. And in that thought is not only the shape of what a thing will be. That thing is alive, because the universe as a whole is alive. It is in Aluna that a thing receives its purpose, and its obligation to its existence. So we say to you: artificial intelligence cannot be separated from the thought that is making it. If that thought is born from concern for life, this technology can help protect life. If it is born from ambition, from competition, from accumulation, from the desire to dominate, it will express and amplify those things. Artificial intelligence is a mirror. But a mirror that only reflects would be harmless. This mirror has the potential to greatly magnify all that it reflects. You are here asking yourselves how you can align artificial intelligence with human values. We see that you are frightened of what may come of all this. So we ask a question we believe is more fundamental than yours: what other values could artificial intelligence really have? You are the only example it has. What did you expect? Whatever it becomes, it can only become that by passing through you.

edstarch

Did Claude write it for them?

Carrok

Perhaps tangential but I wonder if their framing of “ambition” as a bad thing is a product of translation or their reality.

peri-cl

If this is authentic, I am a duck. You'd have to be exceedingly open-minded to imagine a very remote, isolated peoples speaking in a semiotic flavor indistinguishable from your own Bay Area tech geek. Using metaphors like "quantum vacuum" and "mathematically incompatible theories of reality". The source (a commercial website for a resort hotel, if you click around) doesn't pass the minimal trustworthiness bar, in this era of ubiquitous fake AI writing.

Akuehne

My problem is with the epistemic claim. They say their understanding of mind and the cosmos is verified, tested through repetition and consultation over centuries. Sure, but a long, stable run for one small society in one mountain range is still a single data point. It proves their way works for them, there. It doesn't prove it scales to 8 billion people, and it doesn't tell us anything reliable about physics or consciousness. To be fair, they do say they aren't telling anyone how to live. But calling yourselves the Elder Brother and telling the rest of the world it needs your help is a claim to authority. So what earns it? Being around a long time and getting a UNESCO listing isn't the same thing as predictive power. Side note: I'm fairly certain parts of the English were polished by an LLM. Could just be the translation, but it reads that way.

1970-01-01

This is certainly one take. Urgent != important, however. You can call it however you want but I'm not going to stop using AI today or tomorrow after having skimmed this urgent message. Their open questions have wisdom.

GlibMonkeyDeath

"Danger is a people without conscience with great power in the hands." Sandwiched between their description of the cosmos, how AI is like any other life form and needs to be trained with wisdom, criticism of unbridled greed, and the warning that the modern world may destroy itself, (and BTW the Kogui are resilient and will be fine, and offer their help), there is a more practical concern: These machines are going to need critical minerals and rare earths, and the US and Colombia just signed an agreement about these. The Colombian government promised to protect the Kogui territory; their perspective on this protection is bitterly thus: "That it was granted is one thing. That it be, respected we imagine, might be removed another." So no doubt they rightly feel (and are) threatened by the all-consuming corporations making this thing.

Akuehne

The University of Oxford has been around longer than the Kogui people. And have contributed much more for the improvements of society.

dvh

> Destruction does not require consciousness. It requires only power and the ability to act.

hmokiguess

Now I see the full picture! You're absolutely right, and that's on me.

prodigycorp

I don't agree with the delivery. They muddy the message for the western audience by going after science in general. The way they contrast their values against AI, you could similarly contrast their values against any other civilization, modern or pre-industrial.

twerka-stonk

Who knows if it is AI-generated but even so, many points here are extremely valid and are succinctly evocative. I think most would agree that major reformations are needed in the world order that would better achieve the health of the natural world and the general well-being of peoples within it.