The Hollywood star has long campaigned to preserve the planet, and the next phase of the mission involves artificial intelligence

While we’re all familiar with Leonardo DiCaprio’s filmography and awards shelf, the Hollywood actor also has plenty more strings to his bow – including heading up a global Foundation founded to protect the world’s wildlife. Since 1998, the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation (LDF) has awarded grants and led campaigns on everything from rainforest conservation to sustainable food systems. Now, they’re embracing artificial intelligence in the fight against climate change.

“It’s not that AI is a programme itself, but that it’s sprinkled in throughout our programmes,” says LDF’s Director of Innovation, Media and Technology Karl Burkart, who leads on the Foundation’s use of the technology – alongside big data and machine learning – as a key tool for finding out more about our world and putting data into the hands of decision-makers.

“It’s not just some flight of fancy at a TED talk,” Burkart tells me. “We desperately need and want decision-makers with a difficult job to do that job well.”

Here are some of the LDF projects using artificial intelligence to protect animals, equip governments and meet the challenges of climate change.

ENDING ILLEGAL FISHING

One of the first AI projects funded by the LDF wasn’t even an AI project to begin with, says Burkart. When grantee Oceana partnered with Google and SkyTruth to develop independent non-profit Global Fishing Watch (GFW), the aim was to stop illegal fishing – a practice which costs the global economy billions, threatens legitimate fisheries and exacerbates human rights abuses.

While all large ships were required to have GPS for signal and communications purposes, GFW quickly realised that nobody had put the same technology to use in tracking. Using this existing technology, GFW were able to create an open database which tracked the activity of individual vessels and identified illegal behaviour. A form of AI could then learn to make sense of the information and highlight the relevant data to decision-makers.

“It was all about government enforcement” explains Burkart. “You’re getting billions of signals to multiple satellites, but you need to make sense of that in order for governments to actually see who is in the water”. Since its launch, Indonesia and Peru – two of the largest fishing nations in the world – have partnered with GFW in the fight against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

“80 per cent of the world’s charitable contributions are made to developing countries with no meta-level map showing how they can be best used”

SAVING ELEPHANTS AND LIONS

Perhaps the most famous of the LDF’s AI projects is TrailGuard AI, built by Intel and LDF grantee RESOLVE to tackle poaching and protect vulnerable wildlife. “The innovation here was about how we could put eyeballs in all the world’s endangered forests” Burkart tells me. “And then once the eyeballs are there and they’re sending back information, how do we make sense of that quickly?”

TrailGuard AI consists of tiny chips which can be nearly invisible, operational for around 18 months without charging, and, crucially, which can make sense of the information they see. The chips, currently deployed in six iconic African parks, are able to identify and make sense of images of poachers. These are then sent instantly to park control rooms in time for rapid response teams to be deployed before an animal is killed.

MAPPING THE WORLD’S NATURE

It might seem remarkable, but there exists no single map of the world’s nature. “Decisions are being made in absence of a map about what they’re making decisions on” says Burkart, who points out that 80 per cent of the world’s charitable contributions are made to developing countries with no meta-level map showing how they can be best used.

While “not strictly AI proper”, but rather an application of machine learning, a collaboration between RESOLVE, Globaïa Foundation and Universidade Federal de Viçosa now aims to solve this problem by mapping a “global safety net” which would protect and connect 50 per cent of the world’s land area.

Sophisticated algorithms are able to examine each of the world’s 125 million square kilometres of habitable land area, creating a ranking of importance in preserving biodiversity and sustaining agriculture. A network of wildlife corridors can then be mapped, linking together protected areas and enabling species to migrate with rapidly rising temperatures – essentially ensuring that life can survive into the rest of the 21st century.

“We can’t just think of tech as a panacea or a unicorn to sweep in and save us, we still have to take care of the nuts and bolts”

PREPARING FARMERS FOR GLOBAL WARMING

While not yet all funded by the LDF, Burkart points to some specific sectors in which AI can play a key role in fighting climate change in the future, describing the application of AI for more informed and better decision-making as “the holy grail”. He outlines three key pillars for its use: energy efficiency; nature conservation and restoration; and agriculture.

“Farmers need to think right now about what they’re going to do in ten years, when the world is much warmer” he explains. “But no intelligence is given to them. We need to put data into the hands of farmers, with an interface that makes it usable, and we need AI to do that”.

While Burkart is, naturally, an enthusiastic believer in the potential of new technologies to tackle our urgent environmental crises, he also expresses caution. Innovation is definitely going to help, he says, but “it is no substitute for a strategy.”

Instead, he says, politicians and influential figures must face up to exactly what action is needed and how fast, recognising that urgent and substantial action is required in the immediate term.  

“Sometimes (technology) can be a perfect cover to delay action” he points out. “We can’t just think of tech as a panacea or a unicorn to sweep in and save us. We still have to take care of the nuts and bolts”.