AI in Biological Classification: Is Taxonomy Dead?
Revisiting Life’s Complexity After Why Fish Don’t Exist
In the age of rapid innovation, AI in biological classification is not just a tool—it is reshaping how we understand life itself. From redefining species boundaries to uncovering hidden evolutionary connections, AI is changing the way we name and know the world around us.
When I first heard the phrase, I laughed.
It sounded like a philosophical joke—the kind you share over late-night tea with overly earnest friends. But it wasn’t a joke. It was, in fact, a tragic scientific truth, a declaration of failure: not just of taxonomy, but of our human way of understanding life.
The phrase originates from Lulu Miller’s extraordinary book Why Fish Don’t Exist, which traces the life of David Starr Jordan, a pioneer of American taxonomy. He named and classified thousands of species of fish. His legacy is written in Latin across dusty museum drawers. And yet, the category of “fish” is a lie. Biologically, sharks are more closely related to cows than to rays. What we call “fish” is not a single evolutionary group—it’s a visual convenience, a simplification. A misunderstanding.
But perhaps the category collapsed not just because of biology, but because of history. Jordan was also an early eugenicist. His vision of order was rooted not only in science but in a dangerous ideology. Perhaps fish ceased to exist because the man who named them lost the moral right to give anything a name.
And so, the question began to unravel: What are we really doing when we name and classify life?
Were we seeking to understand the world? Or simply to make it manageable? Convenient?
We believed taxonomy could capture the richness of life. But names often erase the flow, the relationships, the evolutionary messiness of what life truly is. Now, in the age of AI, this challenge has taken a new shape.
AI in Biological Classification: The End or a New Beginning?
“There are no more species left to discover.” That’s what someone once said to me in a university hallway. The big ones are all found, they said. Only microbes and environmental noise remain—the kinds of things only machines can sort through.
It sounded plausible. We’ve named whales and pandas and glowing squid in the deep. We’ve made trees of life and taxonomic keys. Maybe taxonomy was over.
But is it?
This isn’t just a question of whether there are undiscovered species. It’s a deeper one: Have we really understood life?
🔍 Have We Truly Completed Identification?
The answer is no. Even now, the undiscovered buzzes all around us: in rainforest fungi, ocean vents, even on our skin. But more than that, we still know so little about how species relate to one another.
- Bees communicate through dances—ecological language.
- Fungal networks connect forests—the wood wide web.
- Viruses rewrite our genomes—chemical librarians of evolution.
Taxonomy gave us structure. But it never gave us the full story. AI in biological classification pushes us to see more—and to ask better questions.
🤖 The Role of AI in Classification
AI is miraculous. It can classify satellite images of plant ecosystems, decode birdsong, even predict evolutionary relationships from raw DNA. It is faster, sharper, and sees more than any human. It creates categories beyond our perception. New networks. New maps.
So we ask: What happens to taxonomy in a world where machines understand biology better than we do?
🌱 Classification Is Not Ending—It’s Transforming
What we need now is not more names, but new ways of seeing:
- Not fixed categories, but living relationships
- Not static drawers, but dynamic ecologies
- Not labeling, but listening
AI in biological classification can draw the outlines. But only humans can fill them with meaning.
🐾 “Taxonomy is Dead” Is a Misreading
Maybe it’s true that traditional taxonomy is fading. But that doesn’t mean classification is over. It means we must begin again. With new tools. With new humility. With a deeper sense of what life actually is.
In the next part, we turn to the act of naming itself. What are the consequences of giving something a name? And what do we miss when we do?
