The ethical implications of Chatbot developments for conservation expertise

Abstract

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.