Keeping What We Learn

As the exponential growth in the capabilities, risks, and adoption of artificial intelligence continues, at least one limitation remains clear: AI cannot yet replace the value of our lived experience, nor the wisdom gained by spending many years in a field or industry.

Indeed, the critical importance of such tacit knowledge was already clear to many nonprofit organisations. For example, any movement that makes heavy use of volunteer effort is keenly aware of the resources required to constantly bring new members up to speed on how the organisation works. And any legal advocacy group knows the importance of strategic judgement in deciding whether the time is finally right to pursue a radical change. So often, the knowledge that matters most is the knowledge that is documented least.

In 2026, the Center for Animal Law Studies’ Global Ambassador Program (GAP) gave me the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to this challenge. I focused my GAP Project on one key initiative: to help animal advocacy projects capture human insight in a meaningful, efficient, and collaborative way.

The project was based around a brand-new program here in Australia: the Brian Sherman Animal Law Clinic (BSALC) at Bond University, which is being delivered in partnership with Voiceless. As of September 2026, BSALC has just completed its first (and highly successful!) series of student placements. I look forward to seeing the clinic grow and flourish in the years to come!

Phase 1: Multi-stream Research

The project began with multi-stream research that identified common forms of tacit knowledge development and communication, both in general and within the practice of animal law specifically. The primary research component was extremely broad in scope, including a literature review, market analysis, and interviews with animal law practitioners. However, each research stream shared the same overall goal: to inform the questions we would later ask interview participants (Phase 2) and use to ideate potential software (Phase 3).

The literature review drew on a total of 28 academic sources, identified primarily for their fit with 3 key theoretical frameworks. Together, these frameworks helped us elicit the modes, technologies, and speeds at which tacit knowledge is currently developed.

The market analysis took two forms. First, we logged and classified a total of 74 products and services, primarily investigating what technological solutions currently exist to capture tacit knowledge. Second, we compiled data from 1,230 registered Australian charities, primarily to assess their reliance on volunteer versus paid staff. (Around 4 in 5 animal protection charities had no paid staff at all.)

Finally, the most human (and the most interesting!) component of the research was a series of interviews with six animal law practitioners from Australia, Germany, and Brazil. These interviews were semi-structured and highly conversational, focusing on questions about the heuristics, observations, and tools they find most relevant to their work.

The main takeaway was surprisingly simple. Apart from a recent boom in AI-assisted transcription software that now captures much ‘social knowledge’ that was previously lost to time, the challenge of tacit knowledge capture is still largely unsolved… especially in the not-for-profit sector, where even conventional enterprise-grade knowledge solutions (e.g. Sharepoint) may simply price an organisation out entirely. This confirmed the need for a software tool (Phase 3).

Phase 2: Interviews with Clinic Students

Next, we conducted a series of interviews with participants in the clinic’s first cohort. We began our engagement with BSALC in June 2026. Law students completed a series of modules and workshops familiarising them with the field of animal law, before being embedded with an actual animal law or advocacy organisation for the duration of the clinic.

Two students agreed to take part in a series of interviews with us, capturing their pre-clinic, mid-clinic, and post-clinic thoughts and experiences. These students were compensated for each interview using the funding from the Global Ambassador Program.

One key learning from these conversations was that it is not only impossible to fully condense lived experience into a set of metrics or numbers, but that even the desire for this reductionism can interfere with the propagation of tacit knowledge. Our interviews flourished most when they were freeform and creative, and we received the highest quality insight into these students’ minds from stray anecdotes or back-and-forth exchanges.

Another learning was that very little of what the students picked up ever made it out of their heads. Both were gaining an enormous amount of intangible learning about what it’s really like to practise animal law (much of it passed on in conversation with their supervisors), but almost none of it was being written down anywhere. That’s a really big deal for a new clinic that needs to know whether its placements are working well!

Phase 3: Software Development

The final phase of my Global Ambassador Program is the development of new software to help animal advocacy projects produce, collect, and analyse tacit knowledge, using the GAP grant provided by CALS. This tool will be made available for free to our first user (whether BSALC or another animal law-oriented program), with the remainder of the grant set aside to cover their running costs.

The core premise of the tool is regular, voice-based check-ins with an AI throughout the course of a program (such as a BSALC placement). An example implementation would run something like this:

1. The program coordinator sets up a program by providing some context, setting how often check-ins should happen, and choosing the themes and questions they want to know more about from their participants.
   
   
2. After each placement day, participants have a short voice conversation with the AI through their phone or browser. Instead of forcing a rigid agenda, our agent will follow the participant’s interests, merely sifting responses into themes as they arise. We also want our agent to ask concise, poignant questions then shut up; we’re interested in what the human has to say, not the AI!
   
   
3. Finally, these conversations are transformed into accessible summaries and a dashboard for the coordinator, who can explore what participants are doing, learning, and feeling by theme, by week, or by participant – and potentially even show donors, to demonstrate that the program is working and having a real impact!

There will, of course, be many practical and ethical challenges in completing this work. From my vantage point, it seems that most people working in animal law are highly skeptical of the role that artificial intelligence will play in the world: and for excellent reasons! I share many of the same worries and concerns (from existential risk to the morality of data centre construction), and we’re already addressing privacy and confidentiality concerns through multiple layers of redaction in our tool.

However, if the world is to continue down this technological path, it is crucial that the nonprofit and for-purpose sectors are not left behind. If AI is to be our undoing, it will not be because we attempted to use it to protect the rights and welfare of animals, nor because we used it in service of people and organisations dedicated to this cause. Indeed, as far as the alignment problem goes, propagating agents that have been explicitly prompted to care about animals and animal law may well be the best we can do!

My thanks again to the Center for Animal Law Studies for supporting my GAP Project, and my congratulations to the other Ambassadors. A special thank you also to my Hello Bridges co-founder, Jack, who assisted with the research throughout and is now guiding the technical side of Phase 3.

The Center for Animal Law Studies (CALS) was founded in 2008 with a mission to educate the next generation of animal law advocates and advance animal protection through the law. With vision and bold risk-taking, CALS has since developed into a world-renowned animal law epicenter. CALS’ Alumni-in-Action from 35+ countries are making a difference for animals around the world. The advanced degree program is offered in-person and online. CALS is a self-funded Center within the law school operating under the Lewis & Clark College 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, and is able to provide these educational opportunities through donations and grants.