Robots Behaving Badly: Algorithmic Colonialism and the Consequences of AI

This article examines the political, social, and relational consequences of artificial intelligence through an anti-colonial and Indigenous lens. Challenging claims that AI is neutral or inevitable, we show that it is embedded in settler-colonial, racialised, and gendered power structures. Across predictive policing, facial recognition, automated welfare, deepfake sexual violence, and embodied robotics, AI does not malfunction; it performs exactly as designed, reproducing historical domination. Drawing on Indigenous methodologies and critiques of technological progress, we show how AI amplifies epistemic and material inequalities, particularly for Indigenous women and communities. We unsettle Western techno-futurist imaginaries and instead position Indigenous relationality as a pathway to ethical, accountable, and sovereign AI futures. AI harm is not accidental but systemic and extractive. We call for rejecting AI inevitability and advancing community-led responses that disrupt algorithmic settler colonialism and reimagine intelligence beyond domination.