Among the hype and controversy over artificial intelligence and gen AI tools are experts who are wielding the technology to address daunting challenges in climate and wildfires, agriculture and health.
On Wednesday, the nonprofit Washington State Academy of Sciences convened some of these folks from universities, government agencies and industry to share news of their research and discuss AI policy and regulations.
They gathered at Seattle’s Museum of Flight for the academy’s annual symposium, which was titled “AI for Washington State: Using Artificial Intelligence to explore, discover and understand.”
Deborah Gracio, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s associate laboratory director and national security directorate, kicked off a panel focused on climate issues.
“AI’s capacity to analyze vast data sets, identify patterns and generate predictive models holds immense promise for advancing our climate science and informing policy decisions,” Gracio said. “AI-driven climate modeling is not just about prediction, it’s also about actionable insights that can drive meaningful change.”
Benjamin Richards, a senior marine scientist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said that a 2022 survey of the administration found there were more than 260 projects underway using AI. The tech is being used for predicting hazardous and extreme environmental events, weather and climate applications, and numerical modeling, among other areas.
Richards highlighted a few projects:
- Combining coastal imagery and beach webcams with machine learning to better predict dangerous rip currents with higher accuracy that human observations.
- Development of a portable tool that uses AI to analyze water samples and forecast toxic levels of algal blooms that impact shellfish harvesting.
- Creation of imaging tools for automating Alaska surveys of pollock, a key commercial fish.
- Electronic monitoring of commercial longline fishing vessels to survey the kinds and amounts of fish and other creatures pulled from the ocean.
Ananth Kalyanaraman, director the AgAID Institute and a computer science professor at the Washington State University, was part of a panel tackling AI and agriculture.
Washington farmers grow more than 300 different crops, many of which are high value, important from a food-security perspective and require significant labor and irrigation, Kalyanaraman said.
The WSU researcher called out some example projects that are applying AI to ag:
- Research into robots that can thin fruit trees or provide targeted spraying of pesticides. Related work uses AI to generate simulations that can model tree growth or train workers in how to prune the trees.
- Using neural networks to predict the ability of grapes to withstand cold temperatures and to forecast the timing of grape plant growth and development.
- Developing models and forecasting on water availability for crops — which is more precise than knowing snowpack and rainfall. The work includes creating a digital twin for the region’s watersheds to provide long-term irrigation insights.
The work is evolving and comes down to a basic principal, Kalyanaraman said.
“We need to really understand what are humans good at, and what are machines good at, and how to basically have a clear partnership,” he said.
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https://ift.tt/DtXAJGC September 26, 2024 at 02:24PM GeekWire
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