Who Governs the Spoken Word?
On 9 June 2026, I gave a talk, "Who Governs the Spoken Word? Speech Tech, Minoritized Languages, and the Limits of AI Law," at the AI & Marginalized Knowledge Systems: Challenges for Research and Society workshop at the University of Warsaw:
The workshop was organized as part of the seminar series of the Center for Research and Practice in Cultural Continuity, where I serve as a board member. It brought together researchers working on the relationship between AI and marginalized knowledge systems: minority languages, cultural heritage, and the ethical and social questions raised by new technologies.
My talk examined the governance gaps that open up when speech technology extends into minoritized languages: who has standing to build, deploy, and regulate these systems, and where existing frameworks for language rights and AI law fail to anticipate the vulnerabilities of small speech communities.
