Scientists Warn AI Environmental Approvals Risk Robodebt-Style Failures
Conservationists and scientists have issued a stark warning that a mining lobby proposal to use artificial intelligence to accelerate national environmental approvals could generate "Robodebt-style" failures, placing threatened species at further risk. The Minerals Council of Australia has requested the government allocate $13 million to trial AI for assisting companies in preparing applications and aiding federal decision-making.
Automation Could Lead to Flawed Decisions
The Biodiversity Council, a coalition of independent experts from 11 universities, has expressed concerns that while AI could handle simple tasks, automating environmental assessments "could lead to Robodebt-style failure, where computers make flawed decisions without transparency." This lack of oversight could ultimately push species closer to extinction. Robodebt refers to the automated debt-recovery scheme that, between 2015 and 2019, wrongly accused hundreds of thousands of welfare recipients of overpayments.
Lis Ashby, the Biodiversity Council's lead on policy and innovation, highlighted that Australia's cornerstone environment law, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, is "full of vague language and broad ministerial discretion." She explained, "The vague rules add to the current length of assessment processes, because they impede rules-based decision-making by human assessors. The lack of clear rules will be even more problematic for an AI tool."
Clear Rules Needed for Effective Assessments
Ashby emphasised that establishing clear rules in the National Environmental Standards, including defining unacceptable impacts, would speed up assessment times even without AI assistance and is crucial for any future adoption of AI. Brendan Sydes, the national biodiversity policy adviser at the Australian Conservation Foundation, echoed this scepticism, stating, "Clearly technology has a role to play in making sure nature protection laws deliver nature protection outcomes as efficiently as possible. But while AI might be a good servant, it is a poor master."
Sydes argued that the federal government should instead focus on filling existing gaps in data around threatened species and habitats. Professor David Lindenmayer, a forest ecologist at Australian National University and a member of the Biodiversity Council, supported this view, noting that research shows a third of Australia's threatened species have not been monitored, while others have only patchy data. He explained that human assessors overcome these gaps by consulting experts, but "AI decisions are only as good as the data they rely on, and good data is not publicly available for most of Australia's threatened species – often not even basic location data."
Government Reforms and Human Expertise
The Albanese government passed reforms to environment laws last year after a 2020 review found they were failing to protect species and habitats. Professor Hugh Possingham, a leading conservation biologist at the University of Queensland, pointed out, "AI tools generally need material to be trained against. The past 20 years of EPBC Act approvals are clearly unsuitable material as the Act has demonstrably failed to protect the environment." To speed up assessments, he suggested the government should instead employ more people to carry them out.
Tania Constable, the chief executive of the minerals council, defended the proposal, calling comparisons with Robodebt "disappointing" and stating that the innovative approach could strengthen environmental protection while improving efficiency. She said, "The proposed approach would support human decision-making with AI tools for both the regulator and the project proponent, including helping to navigate the complexity and variability of assessments and approvals under the EPBC Act."
Government Response and Future Considerations
A federal government spokesperson indicated that budget decisions would be made "in due course," but the environment department is considering how AI could make applications easier. The spokesperson affirmed, "Decisions about whether to approve projects must, and will, always be made by assessment officers, not by AI." They added that AI tools have the potential to save time, reduce uncertainty, and translate technical language.
In summary, while AI offers potential benefits for streamlining environmental assessments, experts caution that without clear rules and robust data, automation risks repeating past failures, endangering biodiversity. The debate underscores the need for balanced approaches that prioritise human expertise and transparent decision-making in environmental protection.
