Artificial Intelligence and the Possibilities of Linguicide: Legitimate Fears About African Indigenous Languages

While modern breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) offer unprecedented computational utility, their global proliferation mounts severe pressure on marginalized linguistic heritages. This study investigates the impact of AI and natural language processing (NLP) systems on African indigenous languages, examining the threat of linguicide—the systematic decimation of a language that occasions mental and social death. Employing a critical phenomenological approach, this paper analyzes how the architectural optimization of AI influences social relations, cultural identity, and human agency. We demonstrate that AI training datasets inherently privilege high-resource world languages, reinforcing historical colonial hierarchies and perpetuating epistemic injustice and epistemicide. Furthermore, the study traces how the computational drive for standardization revives the logical positivist illusion of a “perfect language,” flattening localized semantic nuances and accelerating linguistic assimilation among youth demographics. Ultimately, this paper argues that linguicide is a structural vulnerability portended by AI centralizing tendencies. To counter this digital marginalization, we propose a philosophical framework of linguistic pluralism grounded in decolonial computing, participatory data curation, and structural policy reform, asserting that the defense of indigenous mother tongues is a radical act of epistemic sovereignty.

Artificial Intelligence, Linguicide, Epistemicide, Epistemic Injustice, Indigenous Languages, Cultural Identity, Worldhood, Linguistic Homogenization

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