Michael G. Sherbert is a postdoctoral fellow at Queen’s University whose research repositions Artificial Intelligence (AI) through Indigenous relational epistemologies. Across his work in AI, religion and culture, technology, disability, and Indigenous thought, he argues that AI isn’t a neutral technology. Rather, it reflects an underlying ideology that shapes ideas about humanity, progress, ethics, power, and the future.
His recent book, Deconstructing Transhumanism: A Religion Without Religion (Sherbert, 2025a), examines how transhumanism presents itself as secular while inheriting religious narratives of salvation, mastery, and human perfection. In a related article, he explores these ideas through a Derridean lens, analyzing techno-fetishism and techno-idolatry in transhumanist thought (Sherbert, 2025b).
Building on these works, his forthcoming chapter “Deconstructing AI’s Religious Code” (Sherbert, 2026a) argues that contemporary AI systems inherit Christian-colonial metaphysics: universality, technological sovereignty, and salvation through optimization. Drawing on philosopher Jacques Derrida, he critiques the rise of “automated ethics,” insisting that ethical judgment can’t be reduced to calculation.
Encoding ethical rules into machines isn’t the same as ethical responsibility. In place of technological mastery, he proposes an alternative grounded in unconditional hospitality toward Indigenous relational epistemologies—an understanding of ethics as contextual, lived, and never final (Sherbert, 2026a).
Dr. Sherbert’s theoretical work connects directly to his community-engaged research. In partnership with Pikwàkanagàn First Nation, he contributes to the development of community-controlled AI systems that support language revitalization and cultural continuity. Rather than training large language models on Indigenous data, the project centers data sovereignty and relational accountability. Its technical design prioritizes structured knowledge systems over predictive guesswork in order to prevent AI hallucination and cultural misrepresentation. In this context, AI functions as a teaching support, not a replacement for Elders, educators, or lived knowledge.
In related work, he co-developed the concept of Babaamiwinaad AI—AI understood as “walking with us” (Sherbert & McConnell, 2026). This relational model reframes AI as something that exists within ongoing relationships requiring respect, responsibility, and accountability. Ethics doesn’t arise from code alone; it emerges from how technology is situated within community-defined purposes. AI doesn’t replace human roles—it accompanies them.
Dr. Sherbert’s research also intervenes in debates about AI and disability. In recent and forthcoming publications, he draws on Derrida and Indigenous Disability Studies to challenge enhancement-driven models of AI (Sherbert, 2025c, 2026b). He critiques ableist assumptions embedded in optimization culture and reframes AI as a prosthetic relation rather than corrective technology.
Justice, he argues, doesn’t emerge from eliminating vulnerability but from affirming interdependence and relational care (Sherbert, 2025c). What is often labelled “weakness” isn’t a flaw to be engineered away; it’s part of what binds communities together.
Across these projects, Dr. Sherbert consistently asks who technology serves and who it leaves behind. Whether examining the Western religious assumptions embedded in AI, questioning efforts to turn Indigenous knowledge into datasets, or helping develop community-governed systems, his central claim is that AI should be rooted in relationships, not extraction; shaped by the communities it affects, not imposed as a one-size-fits-all solution; and guided by human responsibility and lived judgment, not by fixed computer rules alone.
For Dr. Sherbert, his work is both scholarly and deeply personal. As an Algonquin researcher, a parent of autistic and neurodivergent children, and someone connected to disability communities, questions of embodiment, sovereignty, and futurity are lived realities.
Looking ahead, he continues to develop both theoretical and community-based research on Indigenous AI governance and the ethics of enhancement-driven narratives. He’s especially interested in how Indigenous futurisms can offer meaningful alternatives to dominant Western techno-utopian visions. His work ultimately calls for technological futures grounded less in mastery and efficiency, and more in care, accountability, and the courage to recognize that not everything should be computed.
Tags
indigenous perspectives, indigenous research, Opinions
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s) in Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca.