Place-based data justice practices for collaborative conservation research: A critical review

Robinson, Cathy J.; Urzedo, Danilo; Macdonald, Jennifer Mairi; Ligtermoet, Emma; Penton, Cara E.; Lourie, Holly; Hoskins, Andrew

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2023.110346

Biological Conservation

2023

DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2023.110346

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Place-based data justice practices for collaborative conservation research: A critical review

Cathy J. Robinson,

Danilo Urzedo,

Jennifer Mairi Macdonald

et al.

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2024

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Cited by 3 publications

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The digital divide in action: how experiences of digital technology shape future relationships with artificial intelligence

Bentley,

Naughtin,

McGrath

et al. 2024

AI Ethics

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The digital divide remains an ongoing societal concern, with digital exclusion shown to have a significantly detrimental impact on people’s quality of life. Artificial intelligence (AI), the latest wave of digitalisation, is being integrated into the fabric of society at an accelerated rate, the speed of which has prompted ethical concerns. Without addressing the digital divide, the AI revolution risks exacerbating the existing consequences of digital exclusion and limiting the potential for all people to reap the benefits provided by AI. To understand the factors that might contribute to experiences of AI, and how these might be related to digital exclusion, we surveyed a diverse online community sample (N = 303). We created a novel measure of digital confidence capturing individual levels of awareness, familiarity, and sense of competence with digital technology. Results indicated that measures of digital confidence were predicted by structural, behavioural, and psychological differences, such that women, older people, those on lower salaries, people with less digital access, and those with lower digital well-being, reported significantly less digital confidence. Furthermore, digital confidence significantly moderated the relationship between people’s experiences with everyday AI technologies and their general attitudes towards AI. This understanding of the spill-over effects of digital exclusion onto experiences of AI is fundamental to the articulation and delivery of inclusive AI.

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The digital divide in action: how experiences of digital technology shape future relationships with artificial intelligence

Bentley,

Naughtin,

McGrath

et al. 2024

AI Ethics

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The ethical implications of Chatbot developments for conservation expertise

Sworna,

Urzedo,

Hoskins

et al. 2024

AI Ethics

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Chatbots have emerged as a potent artificial intelligence (AI) tool for expediting expert knowledge, including evidence used for conservation research and practices. While digital technologies can support the curation and analysis of vast amounts of conservation datasets to inform best practices, AI-driven solutions raise ethical concerns around what source of evidence is used or not. This paper examines the ethical issues around sources, biases, and representation of conservation evidence formulated by chatbots. We interviewed two versions of ChatGPT, GPT-3.5-turbo and GPT-4, regarding knowledge available for ecological restoration and analysed 40,000 answers. Our results show that these chatbot developments are expanding the inclusion of diverse data sources and improving the accuracy of the responses. However, these technical developments do not necessarily imply ethical considerations in terms of fair representation and unbiased inclusion of diverse knowledge offered by different sources of expertise. While the updated model expands the descriptions ofgeographical locations and organizations, there remain limitations regarding equitable representation of different expertise and stakeholders. The updated version of GPT still relies heavily on evidence from high-income countries (88%), North American expertise (67%), and male academics (46%) with limited contributions from minority groups, such as Indigenous organizations (10%) and low-income countries (2%). In conclusion, the ethical implications within generative AI reveal the crucial requirement of human-centered negotiations to consider how knowledge practices are legitimized and embedded in the development and use of chatbots.

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AI chatbots contribute to global conservation injustices

Urzedo,

Sworna,

Hoskins

et al. 2024

Humanit Soc Sci Commun

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Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven language models (chatbots) progressively accelerate the collection and translation of environmental evidence that could be used to inform planetary conservation plans and strategies. Yet, the consequences of chatbot-generated conservation content have never been globally assessed. Drawing on distributive, recognition, procedural, and epistemic dimensions of environmental justice, we interviewed and analysed 30,000 responses from ChatGPT on ecological restoration expertise, stakeholder engagements, and techniques. Our results show that more than two-thirds of the chatbot’s answers rely on the expertise of male academics working at universities in the United States, while largely ignoring evidence from low- and lower-middle-income countries (7%) and Indigenous and community restoration experiences (2%). A focus on planting and reforestation techniques (69%) underpins optimistic environmental outcomes (60%), neglecting holistic technical approaches that consider non-forest ecosystems (25%) and non-tree species (8%). This analysis highlights how biases in AI-driven knowledge production can reinforce Western science, overlooking diverse sources of expertise and perspectives regarding conservation research and practices. In the fast-paced domain of generative AI, safeguard mechanisms are needed to ensure that these expanding chatbot developments can incorporate just principles in addressing the pace and scale of the worldwide environmental crisis.

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Place-based data justice practices for collaborative conservation research: A critical review

Cited by 3 publications

References 130 publications

The digital divide in action: how experiences of digital technology shape future relationships with artificial intelligence

The digital divide in action: how experiences of digital technology shape future relationships with artificial intelligence

The ethical implications of Chatbot developments for conservation expertise

AI chatbots contribute to global conservation injustices

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