《經(jīng)濟學人》Nov 4th 2023 期 Science & technology 欄目 Ground truths 地面實況

?視頻總結(jié)：

隨著電動汽車的普及，電池、電機和線路等需求量增加從而導致鉆、銅、和鎳等金屬價格上漲，為勘探者帶來了巨大的機會。同時，許多公司正在應用人工智能技術來提高勘探效率和發(fā)現(xiàn)潛在的礦藏。其中，Cobald公司正在使用人工智能技術來分析歷史數(shù)據(jù)，并預測地下的礦藏位置。其他公司如Vai和Artilab也在采用類似的技術來尋找銅、金和銀等礦藏。

?視頻文本：

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The future?is electric. That means it will need a lot of batteries, motors and wires.That, in turn, means a lot of cobalt, copper, lithium and nickel with which to build them.?Great times, then, for?prospectors, and particularly for any who think they can increase the efficiency of their profession.?Several firms are applying artificial intelligence (AI) to the process, both to improve the odds of surface?strikes?and to detect underground ore bodies that are invisible to current techniques.

未來是電動時代。這意味著需要大量的電池、電機和電線。這又意味著需要大量的鈷、銅、鋰和鎳來制造電氣設備。這對于探礦者來說是一個好時代，對于那些需要提高工作效率的人，尤是如此。有幾家公司正將人工智能（AI）應用到這一領域中，既可以提高地表找礦的成功率，又能探測到現(xiàn)有技術無法發(fā)現(xiàn)的地下礦體。

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KoBold Metals in Berkeley, California, Earth AI in San Francisco and VerAI in Boston are?tiddlers?at the moment, as are SensOre, in Melbourne and OreFox, in Brisbane.?But at least one bigger fish—Rio Tinto, an Australian-British firm—is also keen.?They are garnering reams of geological, geochemical and geophysical data to feed to software models.?These, they hope, will spot patterns and draw inferences about where to sink new mines.

加利福尼亞州伯克利的KoBold Metals公司、舊金山的Earth AI公司和波士頓的VerAI公司，以及墨爾本的SensOre公司和布里斯班的OreFox公司，目前他們都是規(guī)模較小的公司。但至少有一家較大的公司——澳大利亞英國的力拓集團——也非常熱衷。他們正在收集大量地質(zhì)、地球化學和地球物理數(shù)據(jù)來訓練軟件模型。他們希望這些模型能發(fā)現(xiàn)規(guī)律，并推斷出新礦脈的位置。

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Some of the data are new. But a lot once?mouldered?in the archives of national geological surveys, journals of geology and other historical?repositories—or, in the case of Rio Tinto, which has been operating for 150 years, sat in the form of rock cores in various sheds around the world.

有些是全新數(shù)據(jù)。但很多數(shù)據(jù)都曾塵封在國家地質(zhì)調(diào)查檔案、地質(zhì)學期刊和其他歷史資料庫中--以力拓集團為例，該公司已經(jīng)運營了 150 年，這些數(shù)據(jù)以巖心的形式保存在世界各地的不同廠房中。

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Kobolds?were mythical underground sprites that bedevilled miners in medieval Germany. (They also gave their name to cobalt.)?Kurt House, KoBold’s boss, hopes some of their magic will?rub off.?His firm has reformatted archive data from around the world, many of which are on paper and some of which go back to the 19th century, into machine-useable form.?That has permitted it to build maps of areas of interest all over Earth’s surface.

Kobold是中世紀德國的神秘地下精靈，他們使礦工們苦不堪言。（他們也給鈷起了這個名字。）KoBold公司的老板庫爾特·豪斯希望精靈的一些魔力能夠傳承下來。他的公司已經(jīng)將世界各地的檔案數(shù)據(jù)重新格式化，整合成了機器可以使用的形式，其中許多檔案是紙質(zhì)數(shù)據(jù)，有些可以追溯到 19 世紀。這樣，公司就能繪制出地球表面所有相關區(qū)域的地圖。

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Some of those maps are used to train the company’s AI models.?Others are used to test that software’s effectiveness by checking how good it is at predicting known ore deposits on maps it has not previously seen.?If it passes, it can be let loose on under-explored places of interest, generating leads for KoBold’s geologists.

其中一些地圖用于訓練該公司的人工智能模型。另一些地圖則用來測試軟件模型的效果，測試它在沒有見過的地圖上預測已知礦藏的能力。如果通過測試，它就可以自由地應用于未開發(fā)的相關區(qū)域，為KoBold公司的地質(zhì)學家提供線索。

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Earth AI, led by Roman Teslyuk, SensOre, led by Richard Taylor, and OreFox, led by Warwick Anderson, have taken similar approaches, but have concentrated on Australia, which has particularly rich public geological records.?VerAI, led by Yair Frastai, focuses on the western bits of North and South America, home to eight of the world’s ten biggest copper mines.

羅曼·特斯柳克的 Earth AI公司、理查德·泰勒的 SensOre公司及沃里克·安德森領導的 OreFox公司也采取了類似的方法，但主要集中在澳大利亞，因為該國擁有特別豐富的公共地質(zhì)記錄。耶爾·弗拉斯泰的VerAI公司專注于北美和南美的西部地區(qū)，這里是世界十大最大銅礦中八個銅礦的所在地。

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Dr House is especially proud of his AI’s ability to predict the shapes and distributions of subterranean?plutonic?intrusions.?These are bodies of igneous rock, often ore-bearing, that have risen as liquid magma from Earth’s interior but solidified before they reached the surface.?They can be detected from the surface via magnetic anomalies which suggest that a particular group of rocks formed at a different time from its surroundings, a standard practice in the industry.

豪斯博士尤其引以為豪的是，他的人工智能能夠預測地下巖漿侵入體的形狀和分布。這些是巖漿巖體，通常含有礦石，它們以液態(tài)巖漿形式從地球內(nèi)部上升，但在到達地表之前就凝固了。巖漿巖體可以通過磁異常在地表檢測到，磁異常表明特定巖石群形成的時間與其周圍環(huán)境不同，這是行業(yè)的標準做法。但 KoBold公司的人工智能能夠更準確地預測這些侵入體的形狀，從而建議最有效的鉆探地點。

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And with success. Last year, KoBold announced its discovery of a rich deposit of?chalcocite, a?sulphide?of copper, in Zambia.?Earth AI, meanwhile, has to its credit a big find of molybdenum (an important component of specialist steels) in New South Wales.?VerAI has found ore containing copper, gold and silver in Chile and Peru. SensOre has found a large source of lithium in Western Australia.?And OreFox’s technology has turned up a potential gold mine in Victoria, plus several promising copper prospects.

人工智能取得了成功。去年，KoBold公司宣布在贊比亞發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個豐富的硫化銅礦藏。與此同時，Earth AI公司在新南威爾士州發(fā)現(xiàn)了大量鉬礦（特種鋼的重要成分）。VerAI公司在智利和秘魯發(fā)現(xiàn)了含有銅、金和銀的礦石。SensOre公司在西澳大利亞發(fā)現(xiàn)了大量鋰礦。OreFox公司的技術在維多利亞州發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個潛在的金礦，以及幾個有潛力的銅礦。

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Rio Tinto is building what Russell Eley, its head of exploration data science, calls a “virtual core shed”.?This will bring together details of the many rock-core samples the firm has collected over the years.?Software will then search these for patterns that will assist the interpretation of new cores, and tell geologists the best places to drill next.

力拓公司正在建造“虛擬巖心庫”，勘探數(shù)據(jù)科學主管拉塞爾·伊利如是說。這將匯集該公司多年來收集的大量巖芯樣本的詳細信息。然后，軟件模型將對這些樣本進行搜索，找到能夠幫助解釋新巖心樣本的規(guī)律，并告訴地質(zhì)學家下一步鉆探的最佳地點。

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Dr House observes that 99% of exploration projects fail to turn into actual mines.AI therefore has plenty of room to improve things.?It may also help with a more subtle problem.By greatly expanding the volume of rock which can be searched, it will enable new strikes in familiar, well-governed countries, lessening the need to rely on what Mr Taylor diplomatically calls “exotic jurisdictions” for future supplies.

豪斯博士觀察到，99% 的勘探項目都未能變成真正的礦山。因此，人工智能還有很大的改進空間。人工智能還可以幫助解決一個更微妙的問題。通過大幅擴大可搜尋的巖石量，它將使我們能夠在熟悉的、管理良好的國家進行新的開采，從而減少對泰勒外交辭令中所說的 "異國管轄區(qū) "未來供應的依賴。