Abstract
Metaphors play a crucial role in how designers understand, communicate, and shape technology, and artificial intelligence (AI) is no exception. This paper introduces Archipelagic AI (AAI), a speculative framework that employs metaphor-making as a design research strategy to challenge the colonial epistemologies that structure AI systems. Developed through collaborative autoethnography and fabulation in one of Europe’s richer ecosystems (Samouco in the Tagus Estuary), AAI draws on archipelagic studies and Caribbean decolonial thought to foreground a geosocial intelligence emerging through relational nodes of situated knowledge, where matter, forces, currents, and affects interweave in fluid assemblages. Structured around three metaphorical figures — AI as Contact Zone, AI as Composting, and AI as Companion — AAI proposes design practices oriented toward coexistence, care, and ecological justice. The paper contributes to speculative, place-based, and community-oriented design research by articulating methodologies that integrate more-than-human perspectives into AI design.
Keywords
Archipelagic Thinking; More-than-Human Design Practices; AI Metaphors; Critical Posthumanism
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2205
Citation
de Almeida, F., Sanches, P., Nisi, V., and Jardim Nunes, N. (2026) Designing Archipelagic AI: Challenging the coloniality of AI through speculative metaphors, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2205
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
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Designing Archipelagic AI: Challenging the coloniality of AI through speculative metaphors
Metaphors play a crucial role in how designers understand, communicate, and shape technology, and artificial intelligence (AI) is no exception. This paper introduces Archipelagic AI (AAI), a speculative framework that employs metaphor-making as a design research strategy to challenge the colonial epistemologies that structure AI systems. Developed through collaborative autoethnography and fabulation in one of Europe’s richer ecosystems (Samouco in the Tagus Estuary), AAI draws on archipelagic studies and Caribbean decolonial thought to foreground a geosocial intelligence emerging through relational nodes of situated knowledge, where matter, forces, currents, and affects interweave in fluid assemblages. Structured around three metaphorical figures — AI as Contact Zone, AI as Composting, and AI as Companion — AAI proposes design practices oriented toward coexistence, care, and ecological justice. The paper contributes to speculative, place-based, and community-oriented design research by articulating methodologies that integrate more-than-human perspectives into AI design.