Reflections from the Workshop on AI-Assisted Decision Making for Conservation
It addresses conservation challenges by proposing AI solutions and methodological advances, but is incremental as it summarizes a workshop rather than presenting new research.
The paper synthesizes discussions from a workshop on AI-assisted decision making for conservation, identifying key open research questions in resource allocation, planning, and interventions for biodiversity conservation, and calls for collaborative efforts to prioritize real-world challenges.
In this white paper, we synthesize key points made during presentations and discussions from the AI-Assisted Decision Making for Conservation workshop, hosted by the Center for Research on Computation and Society at Harvard University on October 20-21, 2022. We identify key open research questions in resource allocation, planning, and interventions for biodiversity conservation, highlighting conservation challenges that not only require AI solutions, but also require novel methodological advances. In addition to providing a summary of the workshop talks and discussions, we hope this document serves as a call-to-action to orient the expansion of algorithmic decision-making approaches to prioritize real-world conservation challenges, through collaborative efforts of ecologists, conservation decision-makers, and AI researchers.