What can Indigenous thinking teach us about building sophisticated ethical technology?

Technology moves rapidly. We've learned to move fast and break things, but this method of production often has unintended consequences; machines causing algorithmic harm towards already marginalised groups, a digital economy built to extract data and incrementally influence human behaviour with dubious consent, cryptocurrency contributing harmful emissions and cooking the planet at the same rate as a small country. Working in the tech industry is a privilege and I want to use that good fortune to contribute to a future that is designed to enhance the wellbeing of as many people as possible - not extract and exploit. The sophistication of Indigenous thinking can not only help us build more robust ethical frameworks, but also help unlock the next frontier of technological development. In Australia, we have the privilege of living amongst the world's oldest continuing culture. A culture that has transferred information between generations for 10s of 1000s of years with incredible fidelity does not happen by accident; it involves knowledge of living harmoniously with complex adaptive systems that Western science is slowly catching up to. What kind of protocols can we learn from Indigenous ways of thinking that can help us build better ethical practices for building technology? How can we optimise for wellbeing and abundance, rather than the kind of limitless growth that is at odds with a healthy planet?