As the AI Safety Summit kicks off at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, I thought it would be interesting to look at some perhaps unexpected ways that AI is helping the world, particularly with regards to the energy transition.
The energy transition is going to require a large amount of materials to build the batteries, wind farms, magnets, and vehicles that will be required in the coming years. As such, efficiencies in mining are key to the energy transition and there is a lot of exciting, and perhaps some unexpected, innovations which are helping the world to reach net zero.
Even though mining usually engenders images of large trucks and drills, AI is becoming more important in mining every year. Swedish mining technology giant Sandvik is one of the leading companies for innovation in mining technologies and it may come as a surprise that AI is being increasingly used to assist with improving mining efficiencies. Last year, Rahul Kedia was hired as Head of the Sandvik Artificial Intelligence and Automation Center for Enablement (CFE), and he has been leading the CFE as Sandvik has acquired a number of pioneering AI companies.
An important technology being provided by Sandvik is the Remote Monitoring Service which assesses when preventative maintenance is required, thereby improving safety for the mine workers as well as mining efficiency. This AI technology has increased machine utilization by 15% and decreased costs by 20%. There is also potential for optimising production processes, improve energy efficiency and improve supply chain management, so there is further potential for innovation in other areas too.
Making mining greener is not limited to computer-based solutions and hardware solutions can also offer a great deal of improvements in efficiencies. According to Sandvik, about 4-6% of the world's total energy is consumed by the mining sector and 40% of such energy is consumed in operations with an energy efficiency of less than 5%. By improving the efficiency in the way materials are mined and processed, a great deal of energy savings can be realised. Furthermore, with future developments of mining sites likely requiring even more stringent environmental impact studies than today, using AI solutions as well as hardware solutions to increase efficiencies will continue to be vitally important.
It will be interesting to see how AI can be utilised in other perhaps unexpected industries to realise efficiencies. Whilst AI might have some unknown risk, it also offers a number of exciting possibilities in all sectors and will be one way in which the world can achieve its environmental targets.
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