【每天一篇经济学人】Ground truths 地面实况（2023年第59期）
《经济学人》Nov 4th 2023 期 Science & technology 栏目 Ground truths 地面实况
视频总结：
随着电动汽车的普及，电池、电机和线路等需求量增加从而导致钻、铜、和镍等金属价格上涨，为勘探者带来了巨大的机会。同时，许多公司正在应用人工智能技术来提高勘探效率和发现潜在的矿藏。其中，Cobald公司正在使用人工智能技术来分析历史数据，并预测地下的矿藏位置。其他公司如Vai和Artilab也在采用类似的技术来寻找铜、金和银等矿藏。
视频文本：
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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.
未来是电动时代。这意味着需要大量的电池、电机和电线。这又意味着需要大量的钴、铜、锂和镍来制造电气设备。这对于探矿者来说是一个好时代，对于那些需要提高工作效率的人，尤是如此。有几家公司正将人工智能（AI）应用到这一领域中，既可以提高地表找矿的成功率，又能探测到现有技术无法发现的地下矿体。
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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.
加利福尼亚州伯克利的KoBold Metals公司、旧金山的Earth AI公司和波士顿的VerAI公司，以及墨尔本的SensOre公司和布里斯班的OreFox公司，目前他们都是规模较小的公司。但至少有一家较大的公司——澳大利亚英国的力拓集团——也非常热衷。他们正在收集大量地质、地球化学和地球物理数据来训练软件模型。他们希望这些模型能发现规律，并推断出新矿脉的位置。
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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.
有些是全新数据。但很多数据都曾尘封在国家地质调查档案、地质学期刊和其他历史资料库中--以力拓集团为例，该公司已经运营了 150 年，这些数据以岩心的形式保存在世界各地的不同厂房中。
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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是中世纪德国的神秘地下精灵，他们使矿工们苦不堪言。（他们也给钴起了这个名字。）KoBold公司的老板库尔特·豪斯希望精灵的一些魔力能够传承下来。他的公司已经将世界各地的档案数据重新格式化，整合成了机器可以使用的形式，其中许多档案是纸质数据，有些可以追溯到 19 世纪。这样，公司就能绘制出地球表面所有相关区域的地图。
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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.
其中一些地图用于训练该公司的人工智能模型。另一些地图则用来测试软件模型的效果，测试它在没有见过的地图上预测已知矿藏的能力。如果通过测试，它就可以自由地应用于未开发的相关区域，为KoBold公司的地质学家提供线索。
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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.
罗曼·特斯柳克的 Earth AI公司、理查德·泰勒的 SensOre公司及沃里克·安德森领导的 OreFox公司也采取了类似的方法，但主要集中在澳大利亚，因为该国拥有特别丰富的公共地质记录。耶尔·弗拉斯泰的VerAI公司专注于北美和南美的西部地区，这里是世界十大最大铜矿中八个铜矿的所在地。
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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.
豪斯博士尤其引以为豪的是，他的人工智能能够预测地下岩浆侵入体的形状和分布。这些是岩浆岩体，通常含有矿石，它们以液态岩浆形式从地球内部上升，但在到达地表之前就凝固了。岩浆岩体可以通过磁异常在地表检测到，磁异常表明特定岩石群形成的时间与其周围环境不同，这是行业的标准做法。但 KoBold公司的人工智能能够更准确地预测这些侵入体的形状，从而建议最有效的钻探地点。
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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公司宣布在赞比亚发现了一个丰富的硫化铜矿藏。与此同时，Earth AI公司在新南威尔士州发现了大量钼矿（特种钢的重要成分）。VerAI公司在智利和秘鲁发现了含有铜、金和银的矿石。SensOre公司在西澳大利亚发现了大量锂矿。OreFox公司的技术在维多利亚州发现了一个潜在的金矿，以及几个有潜力的铜矿。
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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“虚拟岩心库”，勘探数据科学主管拉塞尔·伊利如是说。这将汇集该公司多年来收集的大量岩芯样本的详细信息。然后，软件模型将对这些样本进行搜索，找到能够帮助解释新岩心样本的规律，并告诉地质学家下一步钻探的最佳地点。
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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.
豪斯博士观察到，99% 的勘探项目都未能变成真正的矿山。因此，人工智能还有很大的改进空间。人工智能还可以帮助解决一个更微妙的问题。通过大幅扩大可搜寻的岩石量，它将使我们能够在熟悉的、管理良好的国家进行新的开采，从而减少对泰勒外交辞令中所说的 "异国管辖区 "未来供应的依赖。
