AI BriefingAI Adoption in Citizen Science and the Absence of Ethical Guidelines
Key point
AI adoption in citizen science is lowering barriers to participation, but ethical and legal guidelines as well as compensation frameworks remain underdeveloped.
Details
According to a recent study published in PLOS ONE, citizen science projects such as Great Reef Census and NOBURN are using AI to analyze photos uploaded by volunteers, reducing reliance on specialized training and errors from manual processing. This has had the positive effect of lowering the previously high skill barrier to participation.
However, discussion of ethical use and environmental impact has lagged behind the pace of technology adoption. The researchers pointed out that legal and ethical guidelines from governments and institutions have failed to keep pace with the speed of technology adoption, and recommended that when using AI, not only the outputs but also the underlying code and training data be made transparently available.
The study also emphasized that as AI replaces "labor" previously performed by citizen scientists, new discussion is needed regarding recognition and compensation systems for contributors.
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