AI-SEAN P2A 2025: SEASON 3 HYBRID MOBILITY BY DISCIPLINE IN LANGUAGE & CULTURE

Southeast Asia- a region rich in history, culture, language and traditions- is facing assimilation and erosion of heritage. The dominance of cultural superpowers in mass media, too, threatens to render them obsolete. The latest new technologies, namely the internet and Artificial Intelligence (AI), harbor both the potential to preserve the ASEAN cultural heritage and diversity, while also threatening to assimilate and erode them. On the one hand, cloud storage and social media make storing culture cost-effective and greatly boost dissemination regardless of geographical distances, ultimately preventing local cultures from fading into obsolescence. On the other hand, as most prevalent AI models are trained on mostly Western media and literacy, there are biases in their language choice, representation of ideals and other aspects. As such, when their translation output is used wholesale without any critical assessment from a cultural insider, the nuances of culture may be eroded.

Thus, P2A task participants with finding, capturing, preserving and introducing the cultural heritage of their localities to the world, while ensuring that cultural values and beliefs are kept intact in translation. The program will culminate in an ASEAN Cultural Heritage Exhibition Week hosted online by P2A, where participants’ work will be proudly displayed and broadcasted.