Welcome to the Saturday edition of The Conversation U.S.’s Daily newsletter.

My South Asian friends often tell me how dismissive AI is of their worldview. One said that AI cautions him against being “mystical,” in response to some of his questions.

Anthropologist Gareth Barkin’s research helps explain why AI models may not be able to reflect worldviews from different cultures. Describing the experience of a friend who had asked a question about a family dispute in the Bahasa Indonesia language, Barkin notes that while the response was in Indonesian, it was shaped by Western values centered on individual autonomy, rather than the collective, consensus-building approach that Indonesian society values.

Barkin’s research further confirmed that large language models retained their Western worldview even when they seemed fluent in different languages. That’s because English-language sources based in the United States are largely shaping major AI models.

A “distinctly American worldview” travels through these models, “largely unannounced,” he writes, and the concern is that Western views on family life and responsibility may be quietly imposed on other cultures and “come to feel natural.”

This week we also liked stories about the struggle of French Jews on returning after World War II, what people do – and don’t do –to protect themselves from backyard ticks, and what you should know about a new COVID-19 variant now spreading.

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