A WHITE paper released this week by the Los Angeles-based Ivory Education Institute (IEI) unveils an ambitious proposal that can redefine the future of both artificial intelligence (AI) and wildlife conservation. The document calls on governments, interest groups and individuals worldwide to rally behind a groundbreaking initiative that seeks to use AI to unite the United States and China in an unprecedented conservation effort with the help of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). If successful, the initiative can also help the world’s two leading AI nations to set the rules on how AI will be used in the future.
Recent reports, including one from the New York Times released on September 2, 2025, reiterates that AI has advanced beyond human control. It has proven it has the capability to learn, adapt and improve without human intervention. Former Microsoft executive Craig Mundie warned that humanity has created a new “computational species”, while columnist Thomas Friedman has argued that AI’s power is simply “too important” for nations to manage in isolation.
Against this backdrop, the IEI is urging world leaders to harness AI’s potential before it grows into a force beyond human control. The white paper identifies two pioneering AI projects for the member States of CITES to consider at its November 2025 CoP20 meeting in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. The first uses AI to facilitate communication between humans and both wild and domestic animals — an idea once considered science fiction, but now closer to reality, thanks to AI’s rapid development.
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The second directs AI’s immense analytical power towards combating illegal online wildlife trade, a criminal industry worth billions of US dollars, annually. “The Ivory Education Institute hopes that CITES secretary-general Ivonne Higuero will be flexible enough to use her CoP20 gathering to urge both animal rights and sustainable use representatives to prepare an agenda that launches this historic initiative,” the document says.
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