AI Safety in The Serengeti
DeepMind and wildlife conservation
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Safety can be broadly defined as the endeavour to ensure that AI is deployed in ways that do not harm humanity. As such if we bring this forward to its full extent then ensuring biodiversity on the planet and a restoration of nature seems part of this important goal of self-preservation. We could discuss whether the current definition of AI Safety fails to be encompassing beyond one species, humans, yet that can be discussed further at a later time.
Researchers at DeepMind used the Snapshot Serengeti dataset to train machine learning models to automatically detect, identify, and count animals to help researchers unlock this data with greater efficiency.
“Using machine learning for conservation is not new. For example, researchers have previously leveraged tourist photos and YouTube videos to track animals, and audio recordings to identify species by their calls.”
DeepMind and the African AI Community
In 2019, community-led IndabaX AI conferences were held in 26 African countries as part of the runup to the main Deep Learning Indaba at Kenyatta University in Kenya in late August. For a week, researchers, students and community members met to discuss topics in machine learning and AI.
The DeepMind Science Team has developed a model for detecting and analysing animal populations in field data to build AI systems for conservation.
Zooniverse
Looking into this particular case I discovered Zooniverse, the people powered research platform. “The Zooniverse is the world’s largest and most popular platform for people-powered research. This research is made possible by volunteers — hundreds of thousands of people around the world who come together to assist professional researchers. Our goal is to enable research that would not be possible, or practical, otherwise. Zooniverse research results in new discoveries, datasets useful to the wider research community, and many publications.”
DeepMind lends itself to the dataset posted here and the ongoing effort of classifications to help protect wildlife.
I have previously written an article about this topic of using artificial intelligence to monitor wildlife, and if you are interested in this you may like to see my interview with the Norwegian startup Epigram:
Short reflection
It would be great to see a more comprehensive effort by DeepMind to contribute globally to wildlife conservation and partnerships between different companies across the world to ensure this would be interesting. I rather a few people have seen the recent Netflix documentary Our Planet or have seen reports from IPCC and elsewhere regarding the current state of our ecosystem. AI Safety as a research area has a responsibility to help keep animals more safe too, and I believe this could be an increasing focus that positively could influence positively if done correctly. It is worth an attempt.
This is day 80 of #500daysofAI writing every day about artificial intelligence.
