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AI Earth

AI is Helping Seismologists Detect Earthquakes They'd Otherwise Miss (theverge.com) 32

Using the same tools we use for voice detection, scientists are uncovering tiny earthquakes hidden in the data. From The Verge: Oklahoma never used to be known for its earthquakes. Before 2009, the state had roughly two quakes of magnitude three and above each year. In 2015, this tally rocketed to more than 900, though it's calmed since, falling to 304 last year. This sudden increase is thought to be caused by the disposal of wastewater by the state's booming fracking industry, and it's caught seismologists off-guard. As a historically quake-free area, Oklahoma doesn't have enough equipment to detect and locate all of these quakes, making it hard to investigate their root cause. The solution proposed by Perol and his colleagues from Harvard University's engineering and earth sciences departments is to use artificial intelligence to amplify the sensitivity of the state's earthquake detectors, otherwise known as seismographs. In a paper published today in the journal Science Advances, they show how effective this technique is -- capable of detecting 17 times more earthquakes than older methods in a fraction of the time. The method is similar to the voice detection software used by digital assistants like Alexa and Siri.
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AI is Helping Seismologists Detect Earthquakes They'd Otherwise Miss

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  • if there's an earthquake they didn't predict? Oh wait. We're not Italy.

  • by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Thursday February 15, 2018 @01:43PM (#56129966)

    They are running a filter to remove background seismic activity so that they can better read the signal from earthquakes that are not close to the seismograph. New application of old techniques to all appearances. Not knocking the technology just worried that they are slapping the label AI on anything vaguely clever that uses a computer.

  • Please dont use buzzwords suitable for mass media. They use _machine learning_, and it is far from being AI.
  • I love how analytics is called "AI" now. Hilarious. The hype around AI is about the same level as the "VR" hype last year, before VR was exposed as a waste of time.
  • Since when did FFT become AI? The use of the term AI has become a joke.
    • They trained neural nets. Trained = sort of like learning. Neural = kind of like the brain. So it must be like an learning artificial brain. Hence, it is AI.
      • Be still my beating heart!

        This isn't AI and it's not even new... I happen to KNOW that this kind of thing was being done back in 1993 with audio signals doing spectral analysis of a signal to pick out noises BELOW the noise floor of the audio that NOBODY could hope to hear. We even used neural nets to compare these noises in different sources and detect things like direction or even locations of the source if you had multiple microphones providing you audio... Worked like a charm back in '93.

    • by mishehu ( 712452 )
      Man it's all about bilking the simple-minded no? Got to make sure you leverage AI blockchains for cryptocurrency in the cloud. (Surely I've missed a few buzzwords, but I digress...)
  • not Artificial Intelligence.
    In other words, F**king Fracking, which in the end means the destruction of human habitat.
    • not Artificial Intelligence.

      In other words, F**king Fracking, which in the end means the destruction of human habitat.

      "Fact 1: Fracking is NOT causing most of the induced earthquakes. Wastewater disposal is the primary cause of the recent increase in earthquakes in the central United States.

      Wastewater disposal wells typically operate for longer durations and inject much more fluid than hydraulic fracturing, making them more likely to induce earthquakes. In Oklahoma, which has the most induced earthquakes in US, only 1-2% of the earthquakes can be linked to hydraulic fracturing operations. The remaining earthquakes are indu

  • Jonesy the sonar guy find the Red October
  • Or did we just have sex?

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