Thought for the Week
Is the use of Artificial Intelligence in Natural History a good thing?
Do we think over the coming years with the implementation of
Artificial Intelligence (A.I) for natural history, will we lose books dedicated
to identification?
Previously identifying a specimen was identified by keys with very few photographs in any, just pencil drawings. Then books started appearing full of photographs and keys became lost from some books.
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| Excerpt from the Colour Guide to Hoverfly Larvae (G.E.Rotheray) – |
Above is an excerpt from the Colour Guide to Hoverfly Larvae
(G.E.Rotheray) – a superb Identification guide to the hoverfly larvae, there are
pictures in the back but you really need the key.
Now we have Apps, eg Merlin, Seek and Google Lens that listen
to a sound or allow you to upload a photograph, and they give an instant
identification of species in the field, which over the last few years have been
getting more accurate.
But how accurate are those identifications?
What has been your experience of using them, good or bad?
Is A.I. here to stay for natural history identification?
I would love to hear your thoughts, please comment below.
I don't use AI identification guides and can't see myself ever doing so. The only exception is Merlin, because I could see it being useful to know what bird species are around that I'm not hearing picking up on.
ReplyDeleteThe Guardian newspaper recently had an article on its website about the ways in which AI can be useful in conservation, which I thought was very interesting. There are some seemingly genuinely useful ways that AI can be used to conserve species, which seems much better than offering people lazy ways to identify what they see around them.
Thank you for the recommendation to the article in the Guardian yes it was a very interesting read. I like Merlin and use it often. I challenge myself to see if I can hear and identify the birds before it registers them. For a beginner its a useful app especially when the trees are full of leaves, being its sometimes difficult to find the birds.
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