Raising Expectations: A film about AI and conservation

18 February 2026

Dr Sam Reynolds (CRI and Department of Zoology) and Dr Andrew Bladon (University of Reading) feature in a CNA (Channel News Asia) series called 'Raising Expectations'. The episode they contributed to was called "Can AI genuinely improve human health and the planet?"

In the piece Sam and Andrew talk about the research they are doing at the University of Cambridge, with the Conservation Evidence project, which aims to try and change the way we find and bring together evidence to take more effective conservation action.

CNA TV is broadcast in 29 territories across Asia with its satellite footprint stretching across Asia, the Middle East and Australia, reaching around 150 million people.

People can watch the episode here (the relevant section begins at ~23 mins 10 seconds): https://www.channelnewsasia.com/watch/raising-expectations/can-ai-genuinely-improve-human-health-and-planet-5928611

If you would like to see some of the research that Sam and the Conservation Evidence group have been doing on both large language models for evidence synthesis, and on AI in conservation practice more generally, here is a list of relevant publications:

Large language models for evidence synthesis:

  • S. A. Reynolds et al., (2025) Will AI speed up literature reviews or derail them entirely? Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-02069-w
  • S. Jaffer, W. Morgan, S. A. Reynolds, A. P. Christie, A. Madhavapeddy, & W. J. Sutherland. (2025). AI-assisted Living Evidence Databases for Conservation Science. Cambridge Open Engage. https://doi.org/10.33774/coe-2025-rmsqf
  • R. Iyer, A. Christie, A. Madhavapeddy, S. A. Reynolds, W. J. Sutherland, S. Jaffer (2025) Careful design of Large Language Model pipelines enables expert-level retrieval of evidence-based information from conservation syntheses. PlosOne.  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0323563

AI in Conservation