ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
How AI is being used to speed up exploration and improve the odds of success
AI
TO THE RESCUE A
s a young geoscientist in the 1990s, Vince Gerrie could never understand why it wasn’t a common practice to collect more data during mineral exploration drilling. “If you look at oil and gas, they don’t drill a hole without taking physical rock property measurements or sending instruments down the hole to collect in situ data. In the mining industry it’s done, but to a much less degree – many holes are drilled with minimal measurements,” said Gerrie, who went on to found DGI Geoscience, a service provider that collects and interprets data from drill holes, in 1997. “If you’re spending all this money swiss cheesing the ground, why are you not taking advantage of that opportunity to 14 | CANADIAN
MINING JOURNAL
invest in collecting more information and using that information wisely?” There are differences between the mining and oil gas sectors that account for the difference in data collection and use, and investment in new technologies that aim to make better use of that data, says Sam Cantor, head of geology at Minerva Intelligence, a Vancouver-based cognitive AI company. “Even though you’ve got all this modern technology today, you can still walk out there with a rock hammer, a paper map and something as simple as a GPS and find a mineral deposit,” he says. “In oil and gas – without major technology and major initiatives, you can’t really find these deposits anymore.”
That said, why shouldn’t the mining sector leverage the same technology that’s proven successful in oil and gas? That’s where artificial intelligence comes in. Even with a slow start to embracing artificial intelligence – which encompasses machine learning, automation, and cognitive AI – AI is starting to make its way into mineral exploration, with more companies using machine learning and “explainable AI” to produce better exploration targets, speed up the exploration process, and even act as a virtual consultant.
Goldspot Discoveries
In a short period of time, Toronto-based GoldSpot Discoveries has emerged as a www.canadianminingjournal.com
Photo: SvetaZi, iStockimages.com
By Alisha Hiyate
