iNaturalist
Our guest today is Scott Loarie, the executive director at iNaturalist. iNaturalist is an open-source platform that connects people with nature. Scott discussed how iNaturalist goes about their mission. He discussed how people use the platform to understand nature better. For instance, a user can determine the species of a snake from its picture.
Scott discussed how iNaturalist collects data to answer questions from users. He mentioned actions they take to reduce bias in their data. He also discussed how he built AI models to return fine-grained answers to questions. He shared the successes of the platforms over the years and how he created a community to make the platform more robust.
Scott also discussed steps he took to validate the quality of their data. He shared examples of errors the AI models tend to make. He also discussed how they keep the models up-to-date without a regression in performance.
Learn about iNaturalist
Follow our guest
Scott Loarie
Scott Loarie is the Executive Director of iNaturalist, an online platform where millions of nature explorers supported by thousands of expert naturalists crowd-source one of the world's largest biodiversity databases for science and conservation. Scott has BS & MS degrees in biology from Stanford and a PhD in environmental science from Duke. Prior to leading iNaturalist in 2011, Scott was a research fellow at the Global Ecology Department at the Carnegie Institution for Science and a lecturer in the Department of Geography at UC Berkeley with research focusing on global biodiversity loss from African elephants to the California flora.
Thanks to our sponsors for their support
Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business
