White Paper Insight
Using artificial intelligence to bring animal rights groups and sustainable use advocates together for their benefit and everyone else’s.
Artificial intelligence (A.I.) is moving very quickly in developing its already established capability to think independently of the humans that created its problem solving and data analysis skills.
Thomas Friedman and Craig Mundi, the New York Times columnist and Microsoft’s former head of research and strategy, respectively, fear that the world is nearly out of time in its ability to guide and control what this transformative technology has already shown it can do on its own.
Friedman and Mundie believe that the world’s two A.I. superpowers — China and the United States — must take steps together to establish enforceable boundaries to determine what’s acceptable in any future A.I.undertaking.
If not, they fear, the now established Silicon Race could move on its own and stray into areas outside of the universally accepted ethical and moral boundaries that have guided all societies of the Human Race since time immemorial.
A story in Friedman’s September 2, 2025, article in the New York Times should make all of us see this possibility as well:
One of the most striking eureka moments [in the realization of A.I.’s independent capabilities]… came as … companies trained their early machines on very large data sets off the internet and elsewhere, which, while predominantly in English, also included text[s] in different languages.
“Then one day Mundie recalls, “they realized the A.I. could translate between those languages — without anyone ever programming it to do so. It was like a child who grows up in a home with multilingual parents. Nobody wrote a program that said, ‘Here are the rules for converting English to German.’ [The child and A.I.] simply absorbed them through exposure.”
This was the [enormously significant] phase change [that A.I. made] — from an era when humans explicitly programmed computers to perform tasks to one in which artificially intelligent systems could learn, infer, adapt, create and improve autonomously. And now every few months, they get better [at it.]
Having created this new computational species, Mundie argues, we must figure out how we create a sustainable mutually beneficial relationship with it — [so that it does not render us] … irrelevant.
Simply put, artificial intelligence, in Thomas Friedman’s words is “…too different, too important, too impactful … for [the U.S. and China] to just each go its own way [in deciding how to control it]”.
Here is how Friedman posed the basic question confronting all of human society today:
Can the United States and China maintain competition on A.I. matters while collaborating on a shared level of trust that guarantees [A.I.] always remains aligned with human flourishing and planetary stability? And just as crucially, can they extend a system of values to countries willing to play by those same rules and restrict access to those that won’t?
The matter is urgent because we now know that A.I. is fully capable of moving activity on the planet in directions of its own choosing at any time. Our only basic tool to prevent the damage a rogue act might do seems to be to cut the electricity and battery access that A.I.’s computers need to operate.
But, of course, human beings dealing with A.I. would likely lose their electricity at the same time. And we know that we can’t live or produce very long without electricity, either.
So what can be done and done productively in short order to command credible attention to a fresh Sino-American A.I. initiative that could also set mutually acceptable boundaries for all A.I. undertakings?
This White Paper holds that the two A.I. superpowers can begin formulating the guidelines and enforcement tools as part of a geopolitically neutral A.I. project.
Two suggestions have been made: (1) Use A.I.’s governmental and private resources to find a way to consistently communicate with both wild and domestic animals. Or (2) Use A.I. to investigate all aspects of illegal wildlife trade conducted on the Internet to end it.
Specifically, the Ivory Education Institute (IEI) hopes that the member states of CITES would indicate which of the two projects is of greater interest to mankind at this time and then ask the Secretary General to propose it as a project for whatever institution will be involved in setting the guidelines for all future A.I. activity.
Given the alternatives that face China and the United States today in their bi-lateral dealings — think NATO, Taiwan, the South China Sea, Ukraine, Palestine, tariffs, trade, drugs, TikTok, and more — we are proposing cooperation among their governmental and non-governmental A.I. resources at the outset rather than confrontation on A.I. or any other international matter challenging them in the future.
Friedman believes that if China and the U.S. can find the means to work together on a mutually beneficial A.I. project it will lead the way to setting acceptable guidelines for all future artificial intelligence activity. As a result, solving the other problems confronting the two countries may not prove as daunting as they seem now. Of course, if they don’t solve the matter of controlling A.I. activities, they may never get a chance at those other questions.
CITES CoP20 offers an experienced forum and long-planned gathering in which a serious discussion of Sino-American guidelines might get started. Even though CITES is only charged with regulating trade in endangered species, its delegate group and its observer corps are as familiar with wild and domestic animal issues as any other comparable international body. Better, the delegate group and observer corps are meeting together in late November in the 20th tri-annual Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
IEI hopes that CITES Secretary General Ivonne Higuero will be flexible enough to use her gathering to urge five observers from the Animal Rights organizations and five from the Sustainable Use groups to meet early in the Uzbekistan gathering to create an agenda for a subsequent discussion with delegates representing the permanent member nations of the UN’s Security Council.
It is the hope of the Ivory Education Institute that these meetings under the umbrella of CoP20 in Samarkand will result in a draft resolution urging the governments of China and the United States to either begin work on the animal communication matter or the illegal Internet activity along with the initial aspects of guidelines for the Silicon Corps and other nations dealing with A.I. If the decision on where to begin were to be decided in a CoP20 plenary session, it would give a formal launch to the project IEI calls crenextion — the effort to find a way to connect all wild and domestic creatures to each other and human beings for the mutual benefit of all.
IEI has created www.crenextion.org to have a central place to gather the public’s comments on what either project develops. If readers would like to receive updates on the progress being made, please register your email address on the website.
Finally, let us note this: The idea behind this White Paper is a tall order to be fulfilled in a short amount of time by historically adversarial groups in a normally languid and methodical atmosphere. That is quite a challenge for any group operating on democratic principles.
But it is certainly do-able if others now see what Friedman and Muncie have brought to our attention: The urgent need for the Human Race to find enforceable ways to control the activities of the Silicon Race. As a result, think about what might be accomplished at CoP20 beyond their usual attention to the survival concerns of various animals and plants:
CITES would be the first international voice urging China and the United Stats to find A.I. speciality firms capable of using their unique capabilities to find, expose and stop illegal trade on the Internet or creating the elementary tools for communicating with animals, setting boundaries for dealing verbally and non-verbally with their needs and wants, and beginning to develop new ways to ensure that animals have enough from nature and man to eat and live a fulfilling life while humans find an equitable way to enjoy and benefit from the animals in their midst.
By engaging the two great A.I. superpowers in the project at the outset, we can have the best minds and most advanced machines working on the project from the outset. It would also offer a model for the two A.I. superpowers to find a path for resolving some of the other non-A.I. issues facing them.
That’s all very exciting. But this proposal will be stillborn, as are most such proposals, unless it finds leadership from a few prominent individuals. Surely there is one or more individuals among the leaders of the non-profit animal rights organizations who will step forward and say “These are definitely ideas worth exploring.” Surely there are also a few southern African political leaders — at the presidential or cabinet level — who will see the advantages of providing their initial support for one of the two proposed initiatives.
But like anything else in the public sector, the proof of crenextion’s validity will be if it attracts governmental support
to pay the costs of communicating its message, supporting the distribution of this White Paper and its defining resolutions, and meeting the financial needs for subsequent discussions of coordinators and negotiators.
IEI believes that project crenextion offers CITES and its member states, as well as all CITES observers and supporters, a chance to take a giant leap forward in man’s relationship with wild and domestic animals.
IEI hopes this unusual confluence of need, timing and opportunity will not be missed when boldness is demanded to launch a revolutionary new approach to solving important issues.
Godfrey Harris
Managing Director, Ivory Education Institute
September 17, 2025