About

This interdisciplinary conference Natures in Translation: AI, Ethics and Environmental Conservation explores the ethical implications of AI-assisted animal translation for environmental conservation and human–environmental relations. As AI systems increasingly promise to translate animal communications into human language, this project examines the profound ethical implications for biodiversity conservation, AI development and more-than-human relations. 

The conference brings together perspectives from translation studies, animal behaviour science, philosophy, law, literature, computer science, social science, digital humanities and related fields.

It aims to build bridges between science, humanities and social science scholars, as well as practitioners working in conservation, animal welfare, AI development, animal studies and environmental advocacy.

At this conference, we invite perspectives from translation studies, animal behaviour science, philosophy, law, literature, computer science, social science, digital humanities and related fields to address urgent questions relating to the use of AI for environmental conservation purposes. Who has authority to speak for non-human animals? How do these technologies extract, process and interpret data, and what assumptions do they embed about animal communication? What conditions would allow these technologies to contribute to a more equitable listening culture, and how might we identify and address the logocentric or anthropocentric assumptions embedded in their design? What might a more expansive understanding of “listening” at the intersection of environmental conservation, translation studies, critical AI studies and media theory entail? What broader inter-disciplinary framework and collaborations can be developed to tackle these important epistemological, ethical, and ecological questions?

Keynote Speakers

• Khairani Barokka
• Ursula K. Heise
• Eva Meijer
• César Rodríguez-Garavito
• Şebnem Susam-Saraeva

For more details about the conference, please visit: https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/animalsintranslation/conference/.

Illustration at top of page by Mollie Ray.

Date

Location

Get directions

Lancaster University Management School
LA1 4YW,

Contact Event Organiser