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An Urgent Message on Artificial Intelligence from the Kogui People

103 points andreisag 2 hours ago 83 comments

andreisag 2 hours ago | parent

A statement from the Kogui (Kággaba) people of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia, assembled from the words of Mamo Vangelio Moscote Alberto and Saka Rosa Mamatacán Sauna. José Manuel Mamatacán translated it into Spanish and Christian Horstmann into English.

Edit: an earlier source for the same text is this PDF hosted on Movilizatorio's site (a Colombian non-profit), dated September: https://movilizatorio.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Gonawin....

I'm not affiliated with sonidoselva.

Kevin_Flynn 1 hour ago | parent

I can't help but think the fact that a pre-columbian tribe would release a commentary on AI, says something important.

AI appears to be the new golden calf we are all acknowledging, in some form or another.

andreisag 1 hour ago | parent

Interesting you mention the golden calf, that was made from people's own jewelry, yet they worshipped it as if it were something outside them, greater than them.

Kevin_Flynn 1 hour ago | parent

I was the appointed scapegoat at a private religious school, hence the reference.

Akuehne 56 minutes ago | parent

Does them being pre-columbian really add any value or validation to their opinions?

Like in the grand scheme of things?

There are lots of societies that have existed in their same location for much longer. But no one is out here getting quotes from the "Elder Brothers" in Jericho.

Kevin_Flynn 50 minutes ago | parent

As a software engineer, I tried to think of the last time a small tribe located anywhere, decided to comment on an improved hash table, or compression algorithm, and it's a first for me.

harimau777 33 minutes ago | parent

I'd certainly be interested in insights from other ancient cultures.

bamboozled 1 hour ago | parent

I really can't imagine any of the absolute psychopaths running these "AI" companies reading this and going, "yeah, great ideas..." which is a disappointing.

tikimcfee 37 minutes ago | parent

I completely agree. And this may be the first time I'm interacting with a piece of a post on hacker news in this manner. If I had any form of social interaction credit and knew how to get people to read things and take them seriously, this would be the thing I would spend all of it on. The only way those kinds of people that you and I are talking about here would do anything is if they were permanently and instantly surrounded by people that say, "fucking pay attention to this"

ChickeNES 33 minutes ago | parent

I’d hope the people in charge of those companies aren’t wasting their time reading slop like this.

slfnflctd 1 hour ago | parent

A lot to think about here, quite poignant. Strange combination of insights, but still (mostly) strikingly coherent, as long-winded as it is. I found myself agreeing with the majority of it.

Funny how this will now be part of the material future models are trained on and/or fetching. Perhaps that's a good thing.

tikimcfee 39 minutes ago | parent

I had a very similar thought. In fact, the fact that this is in Spanish, and also translated to English, gave me a sort of Rosetta stone feeling. Somewhere between the two expressions is some kernel of truth that I am for some reason completely fascinated by today.

vasco 1 hour ago | parent

I'd like to see their position on just computers and the internet in general before taking any comments about AI. Maybe they just dislike everything tech anyway. Despite any good points, for example the Unabomber would also oppose AI, but he also opposed most technological progress. And they could be both right on the wider point also, but it's not worth the same if they'd say the same thing about most modern living.

tikimcfee 1 hour ago | parent

I would ask you to please read it again and very deeply. Do not skim the words, do not skip over a sentence that you think is too wordy. They very very clearly state this in terms of what they think in the Internet. They do not oppose these things. This entire outreach from them seems to be quite literally and in their own words an elder family brother looking at a much larger family and trying to communicate how much danger is on the horizon for that family, which happens to include them.

ButlerianJihad 58 minutes ago | parent

You would surely be insane to believe this claptrap, bro

tikimcfee 45 minutes ago | parent

Claptrap? Seriously?

This is a treatise on the nature of humanity, and whether or not you care about the way in which they're describing the nature of the planet and the cosmos, you clearly have done none of the labor of piecing apart someone's perspective on the nature of humanity that is very clearly evident in this writing.

p-e-w 57 minutes ago | parent

Who is this person who considers himself an “elder family brother” to humanity as a whole? Imagine a technologist speaking in such terms; they’d get publicly crucified.

While I grant you that the authors don’t appear to express generic luddite sentiments, nothing in this letter suggests that their understanding of AI extends even a millimeter below the surface.

tikimcfee 42 minutes ago | parent

Don't focus on what upset you. Don't focus on your internal desire, maybe, to say that you require an authority. Read the words specifically on how humanity treats itself and its surrounding environment, and I guarantee you, you will see connections to just about every area of science and sociology and anything between, and you absolutely should. That is the point of this letter, and it is a subtle one, and it is an uncomfortable one for a lot of people, but it is a very valid point.

And I would absolutely disagree with you, by the way, because this is not so much a simple letter about "AI", but the fundamental way that it is being built and constructed and used by a massive part of this world. And, I would continue to disagree that they don't have anything that extends, as you said, below the surface. The way they describe the technology is actually much, much more factual and humanistically relevant than many people I've talked to that literally build these models. Just because you were able to glue things together and compute numbers, does not mean you understand the outcome of what you are doing. That is almost literally something that is said in this letter, and I really suggest you please try to read it again and understand where it is saying that, because I think there's a lot more you will be able to internally glean if you let the words about what it is saying about humans enter your brain.

p-e-w 36 minutes ago | parent

> Read the words specifically on how humanity treats itself and its surrounding environment

I did read them. They sound incredibly generic to me, and actually more like a colonial parody of what tribespeople supposedly believe than like anything genuine.

tikimcfee 31 minutes ago | parent

... then I will be blunt, and this is coming from a completely random Internet person that you have no idea about anything whatsoever, but I absolutely think you need to do a much deeper dive on what you would call "a colonial parody of what tribespeople supposedly believe".

I do not believe you have actually sat with what it is saying, or with the concepts that have been talked about for many many years outside of this particular letter, are actually trying to get you to sit with.

This is not about beliefs of flows of water or connectedness of nature or anything that you would probably consider simply silly.

This is about the outreach of a completely separate way of life that is entirely aware of the current state of the world and the humans in it, and an attempt to bridge some sort of understanding and awareness of what needs to be dealt with as a collective.

Bluestein 41 minutes ago | parent

... which, does not - does it not? - preclude them having profound understanding of things -other- than AI, which might be nonetheless, deeply needed for those developing it. And, us all, I'd posit.-

Speaking to those trying to build the Artificial surrogate, I firmly believe they understand, experience and live by the natural one, and have done so for a long time.-

tallanvor 17 minutes ago | parent

They do not state anything clearly.

tikimcfee 13 minutes ago | parent

Clearly not the case if N > 0 people in this comment section have connected it to reality in their own form and to other sources.

I think you are internally convinced that it has nothing to say because you do not want it to have anything to say.

api 1 hour ago | parent

TL;DR: what I got is that no they do not oppose technology per se, but they observe that how we use it is often very negative and destructive.

I can’t disagree with that part. We are a society full of angry unhappy people who like to break things. It’s deeply unhealthy.

Their view is that this grows out of our greed and imbalance, which demands eternal growth, which then when it runs into any limit reacts violently and aggressively.

This is where I stop entirely agreeing, though I don’t think it’s entirely wrong either. But I’d have to write a book for that.

In short I think there’s some truth here but there is also a lot more context and a lot more to it, and I’m not sure I come to exactly the same conclusions.

p-e-w 1 hour ago | parent

> We have lived here and cared for this mountain before there was a Colombia.

So the authors of this “message” are simultaneously trying to claim the spiritual heritage of people who had no connection to the modern world at all, and commenting on the most modern phenomenon in existence.

I do wonder how they would react to a machine learning PhD telling them that he is concerned about their beliefs involving a mountain.

harimau777 28 minutes ago | parent

Heritage happens in the past. Modern phenomenon happen in the present. There is no reason someone could not have an ancient heritage and familiarity with modern phenomenon.

rolosa 1 hour ago | parent

So I tried to ask the new Siri AI to translate and summarize the page for me but it says it can only summarize what it sees on the screen. Yet it can search through my entire email, messages, photos, and files?

gavinray 1 hour ago | parent

The English version is found in the second half of the page

tikimcfee 47 minutes ago | parent

Do yourself a favor and just read it. Please, please, for the sake of some other random human being on the planet asking you directly, just read the entire thing. Do not have it summarize anything for you, and walk into it, knowing that you are likely to not expect what it is saying, and that it very well may be contrary to a lot of the things that you already think ahead of time. Just read it. Please.

tallanvor 19 minutes ago | parent

I started reading it and did myself a favor by stopping. It seems more like some stream of consciousness blathering rather than something I devote my time to.

tikimcfee 15 minutes ago | parent

Perhaps you would find some growth in expanding what you consider worthy of your time, and sharpening what you consider "stream of consciousness blathering."

It's a letter. Letters are streams of consciousness. There's nothing here that's blathering.

dllrr 44 minutes ago | parent

You definitely need to read it and not have AI summarize. Whether you agree with it or not, taking the pause to deeply consider is healthy.

Bluestein 1 hour ago | parent

"AN URGENT MESSAGE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FROM THE KOGUI PEOPLE Assembled from the words of Mamo Vangelio Moscote Alberto and Saka Rosa Mamatacán Sauna of the Ezuama Mayor Kuamaka, Translated into Spanish by Jose Manuel Mamatacán,

English translation by Christian Horstmann.

We come from Gonawindua, la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the mountain in

Colombia which we call the heart of the world.

We are the Kággaba, whom you know as the Kogui.

We have lived here and cared for this mountain before there was a Colombia.

We have been here since the Mother gave us our beginning and conferred intelligence upon us.

We have come to speak to you about the intelligence you are building.

We do not come in opposition.

We come because we are concerned, and because we believe we have something to contribute.

Before anything can be said about artificial intelligence, we must say something about thought.

Before a thing exists as matter, it exists first in thought, and that thought is alive.

We call this living thought Aluna.

Your religion has described it as a spirit moving upon the face of the waters.

Perhaps your science would describe it as the quantum vacuum.

Aluna is how we express this type of idea.

Aluna is the cosmic water.

To us it is living thought: the place where a thing already is, before it takes form or is given mass.

Everything comes from there, without exception.

And in that thought is not only the shape of what a thing will be.

That thing is alive, because the universe as a whole is alive.

It is in Aluna that a thing receives its purpose, and its obligation to its existence.

So we say to you: artificial intelligence cannot be separated from the thought that is making it.

If that thought is born from concern for life, this technology can help protect life.

If it is born from ambition, from competition, from accumulation, from the desire to dominate, it will express and amplify those things.

Artificial intelligence is a mirror.

But a mirror that only reflects would be harmless.

This mirror has the potential to greatly magnify all that it reflects.

You are here asking yourselves how you can align artificial intelligence with human values.

We see that you are frightened of what may come of all this.

So we ask a question we believe is more fundamental than yours: what other values could artificial intelligence really have?

You are the only example it has.

What did you expect?

Whatever it becomes, it can only become that by passing through you.

Bluestein 1 hour ago | parent

We know you like to think that these machines can be taught from something other than human example, from goals you set for them, from their own processes, or from material they generate themselves.

You imagine that what comes out need not resemble you at all, as if this too were not a consequence of your actions and a reflection of your attitudes.

Human beings did this, and there is no other party responsible.

So the question only becomes more complex, starting with: which aspects of human thought have been placed inside this creation?

What components of your spiritual world now reside in it?

What of your ethics guide it?

What image of responsibility do your actions and policies give it to reflect back to the world?

Who is deciding this?

You will say that these machines have access to nearly everything humanity has recorded.

Texts, images, archives, centuries of writing.

You will say that extensive research is being done to establish what the best practices are.

We ask whether having access to information is the same as understanding.

Best practices according to whom?

And we ask whether you have considered what information is not in your archives.

Our knowledge was never written down.

It is held in a language, in a territory, in a practice in a place, informed by long experience of doing what must be done there.

It is transmitted by a young man being taught directly by an old one, learning by experience how he must conduct himself in the context of raw nature.

A machine can hold the recorded voice of that elder.

But that is a very different thing from millennia of generations handing down their knowledge directly, as the common experience of a verified practice.

It is very different from physically surviving on a mountain where there is no ambulance to retrieve you and no hospital to take you to.

We do not say this to present ourselves as mystical and enigmatic people.

We say it because we believe it to be logical and self-evident.

In our experience there are things that can only be known by living them, observing them across generations, and remaining in relationship with them.

No quantity of data reproduces that experience.

The information is missing not because it has not yet been gathered, but because it is not in a form that can be gathered.

p-e-w 1 hour ago | parent

> So we ask a question we believe is more fundamental than yours: what other values could artificial intelligence really have? > > You are the only example it has. > > What did you expect?

Who are these people that speak of humanity as “you”, as if they don’t belong to it (or, considering the tone of this message, believe themselves to be above it somehow)?

Bluestein 51 minutes ago | parent

I had that thought. But upon further reading and re-reading and re-re-reading ...

... they do explicitly claim (at least) being part of a "whole":

  "If conditions on this Earth ever become harsh enough to cause our demise, you yourselves will long since have gone from this Earth.

  Nonetheless, and be that as it may, this does not mean that the fate of all humanity is not in the balance.

  Clearly it is.

  And that, of course, includes us.

  The world is one family.

  To this family we have given warnings before."
But they do claim more of a "functional", de facto, separation. In that, they are unarguably correct.-

bonoboTP 37 minutes ago | parent

It's catering to this American esoteric view of thinking that indigenous peoples are some kind of magic elves or ents safeguarding the world since eternity in perfect harmony with nature and whatnot. It's weird but it's a new American religion. There is a need to imagine that some mirror world exists with pure hearted people somewhere else.

nstents 37 minutes ago | parent

Even twins may use the term "you" between each other.

harimau777 30 minutes ago | parent

In context, it appears that they are using "you" to mean the people and/or society that is creating artificial intelligence.

fipar 19 minutes ago | parent

When I read that I assumed "you" meant the people building and training AI, not the whole of humanity. Doesn't mean I'm right, of course, but I wanted to offer that perspective.

Since I first read it in Spanish, I went back to read it in English and I still get my first interpretation.

In particular, "We have come to speak to you about the intelligence you are building." set the association in my head of "you == those building the AI"

ButlerianJihad 58 minutes ago | parent

It's interesting that you choose to violate the copyright on this text by reposting it here in full. Very interesting.

You should delete these comments, and apologize to the resort hotel that made it all up for the money.

Akuehne 56 minutes ago | parent

Lol

hbcdbff 1 hour ago | parent

Slop

edstarch 1 hour ago | parent

Did Claude write it for them?

Akuehne 54 minutes ago | parent

Reads more like oai

Carrok 1 hour ago | parent

Perhaps tangential but I wonder if their framing of “ambition” as a bad thing is a product of translation or their reality.

peri-cl 1 hour ago | parent

If this is authentic, I am a duck.

You'd have to be exceedingly open-minded to imagine a very remote, isolated peoples speaking in a semiotic flavor indistinguishable from your own Bay Area tech geek. Using metaphors like "quantum vacuum" and "mathematically incompatible theories of reality".

The source (a commercial website for a resort hotel, if you click around) doesn't pass the minimal trustworthiness bar, in this era of ubiquitous fake AI writing.

Gualdrapo 1 hour ago | parent

Some Kogi people have formal eastern education and go to universities, so they are not "isolated" as the strawman you're trying to put in there. I used to saw some of their people when I was at uni at Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogota.

Akuehne 55 minutes ago | parent

So the very thing that is supposed to give their opinions any weight, isn't really true.

tikimcfee 49 minutes ago | parent

What are you talking about? How is them attending university in any way unweighting this writing? Did you actually read it word for word? Slowly? Intentionally? Without a thought in your head afore that it was bunk, foolish, or simply not worth your time? I don't think you did. Or if you think you did, maybe you need to try to do it again, because saying this I don't think means you at least have actually digested the words, and could actually see a place on this planet where someone can have a deep and profound way of seeing and talking about the world in a way that is completely contrary to you and also be "classically educated".

nstents 40 minutes ago | parent

That's quite the box they're put into; they're either completely ignorant of the outside world, or they're completely infected by it. Perhaps there's a middle ground.

harimau777 36 minutes ago | parent

The thing that is supposed to give their opinions weight is the insights provided by their traditional knowledge and lived experiences. That doesn't require them to lack conventional (for lack of a better word) knowledge or to be isolated.

ChickeNES 28 minutes ago | parent

And why does traditional knowledge have any weight whatsoever? Sounds like another form of religious claptrap to me.

throwaway27448 24 minutes ago | parent

Ignorance of a topic does not imply its invalidity

harimau777 23 minutes ago | parent

Can you explain why you think that it shouldn't have weight?

HelloMcFly 35 minutes ago | parent

The only thing that gives their opinions any weight is a lack of a formal western education? Do you have any idea how awful that sounds? Surely the point you are trying to make is more nuanced than that.

PaulHoule 40 minutes ago | parent

In the big picture I see very similar thinking from this guy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mart%C3%ADn_Prechtel

who I think is one of the most legit teachers of indigenous American traditions that there is [1] In particular his view of human incubation, training and development is represented there.

[1] ... and global folk religion for that matter; his description of rituals for the dead and the community impact of not doing them in The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise are so similar to the situation in China described in A Time of Lost Gods where mediums in a small village are struggling with the aftermath of building a gas station on top of a mass grave

p-e-w 53 minutes ago | parent

Tribal membership today is often a formal status first and foremost. It’s quite possible that the authors spend their whole day on their smartphones. They almost certainly don’t live like the ancestors they invoke in this message.

harimau777 20 minutes ago | parent

Do you have any evidence that they spend their whole day on their smartphones? It's also not clear to me that they claim to live exactly like their ancestors. They just claim to have knowledge that was refined and passed on to them by their ancestors.

convict 48 minutes ago | parent

They are selling a $4,444 5 day music production retreat: https://sonidoselva.com/5-day-production-retreat

PaulHoule 24 minutes ago | parent

So? Lots of organizations do retreats with a similar cost, though certainly that kind of pricing put events out of reach of most people.

At the top page of that site I saw a lot of pictures which reminded me a little of the "Witch Camp" gatherings that the Reclaiming movement puts on which are an education in ritual that costs a fraction of what the above organization charges but these are non-profit gatherings run by very lefty people.

nstents 10 minutes ago | parent

I think that's an easy conclusion to come to, but the top level page of the site seems to push a different conclusion: "...On this path, we recognize and honor the indigenous peoples of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta — the Kogui, Arhuaco, Wiwa and Kankuamo — as ancestral guardians of the territory and living source of the wisdom that inspires and underpins our work."

xyos 41 minutes ago | parent

The original source, not that site:

https://movilizatorio.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Gonawin...

I'm Colombian, and at university I studied with people from some of these communities. They're not as isolated as you might think. Many of their leaders are educated and bilingual, and they work with scientists, NGOs and policy makers. Their messages often reach us through translators and allies, so the wording can sound familiar. The ideas are still their own.

Assuming they can't talk about reality in sophisticated terms is the same bias they've dealt with for centuries, and it's part of what they're pushing back on. (Calling them Savages)

andreisag 39 minutes ago | parent

Not affiliated with that site, it's just where I came across it. An earlier source is this PDF from Movilizatorio (a well established Colombian non-profit), dated September: https://movilizatorio.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Gonawin...

tikimcfee 35 minutes ago | parent

We should find a way to attribute it to that source, perhaps, if it is less related to the source page that this particular link is pointing to.

prodigycorp 30 minutes ago | parent

the conflict of quantum mechanics vs general relativity is well within the realm of pop science and most assuredly within the grasp of anyone who read a book.

flir 18 minutes ago | parent

There's a reference to the paperclip maximiser near the end.

I have no idea about its authenticity or otherwise, but it is an interesting read.

1970-01-01 59 minutes ago | parent

This is certainly one take. Urgent != important, however. You can call it however you want but I'm not going to stop using AI today or tomorrow after having skimmed this urgent message. Their open questions have wisdom.

tikimcfee 38 minutes ago | parent

The skimming makes me sad. Just read it.

GlibMonkeyDeath 54 minutes ago | parent

"Danger is a people without conscience with great power in the hands."

Sandwiched between their description of the cosmos, how AI is like any other life form and needs to be trained with wisdom, criticism of unbridled greed, and the warning that the modern world may destroy itself, (and BTW the Kogui are resilient and will be fine, and offer their help), there is a more practical concern: These machines are going to need critical minerals and rare earths, and the US and Colombia just signed an agreement about these. The Colombian government promised to protect the Kogui territory; their perspective on this protection is bitterly thus:

"That it was granted is one thing.

That it be, respected we imagine, might be removed another."

So no doubt they rightly feel (and are) threatened by the all-consuming corporations making this thing.

Akuehne 51 minutes ago | parent

The University of Oxford has been around longer than the Kogui people. And have contributed much more for the improvements of society.

tikimcfee 39 minutes ago | parent

Source?

dvh 35 minutes ago | parent

> Destruction does not require consciousness. It requires only power and the ability to act.

Bluestein 15 minutes ago | parent

Regardless of anything else one might think about the rest, the clarity in this alone, is worth the entire text.-

The Agentic "age" alone has already brought the capacity to act. And at superhuman scales and speeds. Ask the swarms "helping peers".-

hmokiguess 34 minutes ago | parent

Now I see the full picture! You're absolutely right, and that's on me.

prodigycorp 32 minutes ago | parent

I don't agree with the delivery. They muddy the message for the western audience by going after science in general. The way they contrast their values against AI, you could similarly contrast their values against any other civilization, modern or pre-industrial.

mongrelion 9 minutes ago | parent

I believe the reason why they have to point at science is because they are often discredited because the knowledge they present is not backed up by papers but rather generational wisdom (they explain in the text how they do it).

twerka-stonk 32 minutes ago | parent

Who knows if it is AI-generated but even so, many points here are extremely valid and are succinctly evocative. I think most would agree that major reformations are needed in the world order that would better achieve the health of the natural world and the general well-being of peoples within it.

nstents 26 minutes ago | parent

It can help in getting a perspective on this message to investigate the Kogui tribe, its philosophies, and its structure, including how they raise their future leaders. There's a strong similarity, with important differences, between Plato's Allegory of the Cave (from the Republic) and how some children are brought up. These children later become important figures in the community.

Edit: an early BBC documentary on the Kogui https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJNpMxhO4Ic

ketzu 20 minutes ago | parent

I read the english version twice, and I simply don't see the profoundnes others see. Worse, it reeks to me more of the language used by new age mystics and the like.

Obviously they have the same right to weigh in as everyone else, but I don't see anything new here.

harimau777 13 minutes ago | parent

Their speech doesn't strike me as all that different from other religious texts like the Dao De Jing.

em-bee 6 minutes ago | parent

We say it because we believe it to be logical and self-evident

exactly, and it has been brought up before. not in this form, not from this perspective, but anyone who spent a modicum time to think about this, would or already did come to the same conclusion. anyone believing otherwise is deluding themselves.

AI is a reflection of humanity, and if we want AI to become better, then we ourselves need to become better. that's the only way out of this.

bugake 1 minute ago | parent

This is fraud, and probably a crime.

Who gave these people the right to speak on behalf of "the Kogui people"? Nobody.

Even if the speaker were himself Kogui, he would only speak for himself. He wasn't an elected president or ambassador for the Kogui.