CRCS held AI-Assisted Decision-Making for Conservation Workshop
In Oct, 2022, the AI-Assisted Decision-Making for Conservation workshop convened to explore the opportunities to expand the breadth of AI methods — particularly for optimization, planning, and evaluation — that are being developed for and applied to conservation. In this workshop, we discussed the challenges raised during the workshop in conservation area management; methods discussed in AI, earth observation, and causality; and limitations in the application of AI for conservation. After hearing from experts on these topics, we as a group discussed the state of the field, including opportunities, and limitations, and of using current methods for AI for conservation. For example, toward developing new methods and frameworks for AI-assisted conservation, we developed the following set of guiding questions:
- what questions in conservation are answerable and what decisions are supportable with AI (what is AI-able?),
- the associated costs of the development and deployment of AI for conservation,
- how these AI approaches can contribute to/assist decision making and prioritization.
- how can AI help assess/measure impacts