The Imperative: Why This AI Ethics CoP Now?
Dominant AI ethics frameworks are failing. Focused on technical bias mitigation, post-hoc auditing, and compliance, they tinker at the edges while the field replicates legacies of extraction, exclusion, and epistemic violence.
This Community of Practice is a deliberate intervention. We create a structured, sustained space to re-found AI ethics on principles of justice, reciprocity, and holistic well-being, applying the SETSI worldview directly to AI's conception, development, and governance.

Vision: To co-create an AI ethics praxis rooted in frontline intelligence and Ancestral wisdom, ensuring AI serves as a lever for collective well-being and systemic renewal, not a weapon of disproportionate harm.

Purpose: To move beyond theoretical, compliance-driven models. We cultivate a living community that:

· Interrogates Root Causes: Examines how AI replicates extraction in data, labor, and capital, addressing structural, not just algorithmic, bias.

· Prototypes Alternatives: Designs AI systems and governance grounded in reciprocity, care, and long-term holistic value

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· Strengthens Field Capacity: Builds the literacy, agency, and leadership of marginalized communities in AI discourse, development, and policymaking.

· Informs Real-World Action: Generates frameworks, tools, and strategies that influence entrepreneurship, capital deployment, and social innovation.

Core Principles of Our AI Ethics Praxis

1. From Bias Mitigation to Structural Reimagining: We challenge the structural and epistemological biases in who funds, builds, and benefits from AI.

2. Ancestral Wisdom as Foundational Code: We honor and integrate ways of knowing—relationality, intergenerational stewardship, holistic thinking—excluded from Western techno-scientific paradigms.

3. Frontline Intelligence is Non-Negotiable Expertise: Lived experience of navigating systemic risk is critical for anticipating AI's failure modes and designing equitable systems.

4. Complexity-Informed Ethics: We embrace the polycrisis context, requiring AI ethics that are dynamic, contextual, and capable of steering toward pluriversal, thriving futures.

5. Architects of New Logics: We work to embed ethical DNA into the engines of AI finance, policy, and innovation, shifting the trajectory toward shared prosperity.

Who We Are & How We Operate
This CoP convenes a curated, multi-sector ecosystem:

· Frontline Innovators & Community Stewards: Those building resilient systems within marginalized communities.

· Rooted Technologists & Ethicists: AI practitioners working from justice-centered frameworks.

· Complexity Scientists & Systems Thinkers: Scholars understanding interconnected risk in socio-technical systems.

· Capital & Policy Strategists: Investors and policymakers committed to redirecting flows toward equitable AI.

· Ancestral Wisdom Keepers: Elders and cultural custodians guiding principles of long-term responsibility.

Our Rhythm of Work:

· Deep Dive Sessions: Exploring “Polycrisis-Aware AI Design,” “Data as Land: Sovereignty and Extraction,” and “Ancestral Algorithms: Models of Relationality.”

· Praxis Labs: Collaborative prototyping of ethical audit frameworks, reciprocal data contracts, and community-based oversight models.

· Field Catalysis: Publishing manifestos and policy briefs; forming alliances to influence key levers in the AI ecosystem.

Call to Architects
The dominant paradigm of AI ethics is insufficient. Tinkering at the edges is complicity.
We are building the alternative—a rooted, rigorous, and revolutionary practice.
Join us to strengthen capacity, amplify intelligence, and architect the future that embedded wisdom demands. This is not a discussion group. It is a design studio for AI in a world in renewal.

Architect the Transition with Us.

The SETSI Institute
Channeling Lived Genius. Architecting Systemic Renewal.
To participate, email: Maat@setsi.ca