The More We Know: Enabling Faster and Smarter Ocean Energy and Mineral Resource Management with Artificial Intelligence

摘要

Six years ago, every time a photograph or video was analyzed for the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's (BOEM) Environmental Studies Program (ESP; see sidebar), it was done by a person manually reviewing the image. Every time a species or individual whale was identified from those photographs or videos, it was done by a person. Every photograph. Every video. Every single time. The human brain is an amazing feat of biology and evolution, capable of discerning great detail. A well-trained analyst may be able to identify an individual endangered North Atlantic right whale by sight with no more than a collection of reference images. But that identification could take hours. Often the only way to speed up the process is to bring in additional reviewers, each of whom require training, office space, and a salary. And no person - no matter how well trained in the art of species identification - can identify an individual whale or dolphin from a single photograph in a matter of minutes. But a computer can.