"Huge Potential" for AI Diamond Exploration
August 21, 24
(IDEX Online) - Botswana Diamonds (BOD) says it has started using AI to analyze a vast database in search of new diamond deposits.
The UK-based explorer says it has "huge potential" and expects Initial results within the next four to six weeks.
It has developed "mineral prospectivity technology" called Xplore in a collaboration with UK-based International Geoscience Services Limited.
"The system acts much like a geologist but can function quicker and more efficiently," the company said in an update last Friday (16 August).
"Vast data-sets are processed though AI that finds logical gaps in the data and learns to correct them. This exercise is expected to yield fresh insights that will offer drillable targets previously unseen.
The company says it has the second largest diamond exploration database in Botswana, comprising 380 gigabyte of data and 260,000 files.
It covers around 95,000 sq km of data and 375,000 km airborne geophysical data, 606 ground geophysical surveys, approximately 228,000 soil sample results and32,000 drill hole logs.
BOD chairman, John Teeling, said: "Our mineral database in Botswana is simply vast. Too big for timely analysis by humans.
" We feed in the data and create the models from our existing knowledge both theoretical and factual. The techniques then produce results. Where it finds inconsistencies or gaps it adapts. It is early stages in both our work and the use of the technique in mineral exploration, but the future potential is huge."
File pic shows a BOD exploration at Thorny River, South Africa.