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Short abstract

This paper explores the application of Elder Albert Marshall's concept of 'two eyed seeing' as a strategy for navigating decolonial gestures in knowledge politics, using the case of seeing water in relation to AI development.

Long abstract

Does AI use too much water? This question reiterates the hierarchy between expert and lay knowledge in this area, and to mobilize ‘controversy as the engine of authority’ (Marres et al, 2025). Yet in an article identifying supposedly egregious over-estimations of water use by data centres, journalist Molly Taft writes, “people . . .are angry about LLMS and water because they are rejecting the entire premise that AI is worth the price of its water use. A societal mass value judgement on AI is . . .playing out in real time in the uproar around data centres” (2025).

Controversiality solidifies the idea of AI as an inevitable society reality. However, the arguments about water use are both about AI and not: the leveraging of water use as a foil for generalized uncertainty about the ‘AI project’ also contains a more existential consideration of human flourishing. What kind of waste or repair might be possible using this form of seeing?

Decolonial gestures such as the principle of ‘Two Eyed Seeing’ or Etuaptmumk (Reid et al, 2021) can provide ways to analyse such knowledge coexistence – including the coexistence between indigenous and mainstream ways of knowing. These approaches identify how apparent debates about scientific controversies carry deeper and more profoundly transformative potential. This paper develops Two Eyed Seeing perspectives on discussions of data centre water use, within a broader project focusing on epistemic challenge and integration in studies of technology innovation.