Emotion Vs Usefulness

Does it really matter is it's cultural or not if it's useful?

Symobolically representative

It's ultimately about is it serving the people. How does something serve someone?
Who is it ultimately serving?

How can a technology be truly culturally aligned?

Why should a technology here AI models Should be culturally aligned?
There is an important field of research that is focussed on making the AI models culturally and locally aligned. The main reason why the scholars propose that the models should be locally and culturally aligned is that if they are locally and culturally aligned. They would be more relevant and useful to people. However I am not entirely convinced that the relevance or the cultural-alignment is a pre-requisite for usefulness. Yes, when a LLM model keeps repeating western symbols that could lead to eventual forgetting of local symbols but does that necessarily mean that it would reduce the usefulness of the models for the people. The answer is yes and a no. In the grander scheme of things, it's a loss for the humanity but in the immediate systems level it doesn't really affect the usefulness of the people. I argue that people always better benefit from following or adhering to the dominant or powerful cultural symbols and artifacts. The loss of cultural-relevance doesn't really affect the people if the concerned culture is already in a disadvantaged position in the larger socio-political framing.
Let me make my case by situating my argument in education since that's a content that I 'm more familiar with. One of the main use cases for LLM in education is generating learning content. Let's consider a village named Vayalur. Our technologists from Khanamigo wants to support the children of Vayalur with their education and improve the quality of learning. The education folks in the Khanamigo team is of the strong opinion that the learning content provided should have examples that are locally and culturally- relevant so that the children understand it better and learn better. only superficial usage of symbols. What's taught in the Curriculum. What the curriculum preparing the students for. The Indian education system is preparing the students mainly for certain kinds of jobs in the city or in the offices but not necessarily to leverage their local system. The rewards are not in learning what's local but the rewards are misplaced. It doesn't matter if they know their local ecology or how the local ponds work. But it matters to be able to speak English because that will only provide employment. It doesn't matter what the local and culturally relevant Artforms are because it would pay more to play piano than local drums. Basically the point is, it is more rewarding to gain and assimilate with the dominant cultural groups. An important aspect of culture is not only what has happened in the past but also what people want in the future. It is towards the aspirations that the cultures move towards. In that sense, cultural-alignment is not about the alignment of the yesterwhile cultural symbols but rather it's equally about what the culture is moving towards.

AI is suggesting more symbols outside my culture. But so what? As long as it's being useful to me. lathy don't I accept?

It's important to preserve culture or give importance to local wisdom because it can actually make people's lives better. But if the system that we are in have different priorities and the local wisdom is not rewarded, in that case we are just doing lip service for preserving culture. This kind of cultural-alignment doesn't happen at an AI model level. We do it at a social system level. We bring cultural-alignment by legitimising cultural practices. Not by saying with words but with actions and practices