A new app under development is using deep learning and artificial intelligence to classify different kinds of sea ice.
A new app under development is using deep learning and artificial intelligence to classify different kinds of sea ice. People snapping photos during Arctic cruises and uploading them to the new app could someday help prevent Titanic -scale disasters.
If you’ve watched Netflix, shopped online, or run your robot vacuum cleaner, you’ve interacted with artificial intelligence, AI. AI is what allows computers to comb through an enormous amount of data to detect patterns or solve problems. The European Union says AI is set to be a “defining future technology.”
And yet, as much as AI is already interwoven into our everyday lives, there’s one area of the globe where AI and its applications are in their infancy, says Ekaterina Kim, an associate professor at NTNU’s Department of Marine Technology. That area is the Arctic, an area where she has specialized in studying sea ice, among other topics.
“It’s used a lot in marketing, in medicine, but not so much in Arctic (research) communities,” she said. “Although they have a lot of data, there is not enough AI attention in the field. There’s a lot of data out there, waiting for people to do something with them.”
Read more at Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Image: As global warming thaws Arctic sea ice, more and more ships will travel these waters. Knowing what kinds of ice they might meet can help make the journey safer. The photo shows the Swedish icebreaker Oden in broken and brash ice. (Credit: Sveinung Løset/NTNU)
