Leveraging the collaborative power of AI and citizen science for sustainable development

Abstract

Both artificial intelligence (AI) and citizen science hold immense potential for addressing major sustainability challenges from health to climate change. Alongside their individual benefits, when combined, they offer considerable synergies that can aid in both better monitoring of, and achieving, sustainable development. While AI has already been integrated into citizen science projects such as through automated classification and identification, the integration of citizen science approaches into AI is lacking. This integration has, however, the potential to address some of the major challenges associated with AI such as social bias, which could accelerate progress towards achieving sustainable development. Integrating citizen science into artificial intelligence (AI) can help address major sustainability issues as well as some of the potential drawbacks associated with a wide use of AI. This Perspective highlights the advantages and challenges of such integration in light of achieving sustainable development.