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DeepMind’s new AI tracks Serengeti herds from images alone

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Geekz Snow
DeepMind’s new AI tracks Serengeti herds from images alone

DeepMind, the U.K.-based AI research subsidiary acquired by Alphabet in 2014 for $500 million, today detailed ecological research its science team is conducting to develop AI systems that’ll help study the behavior of animal species in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park.

It hopes to expedite the analysis of data from hundreds of motion-detecting field cameras, which have captured millions of images since they were deployed by the Serengeti Lion Research program over nine years ago.

“The Serengeti is one of the last remaining sites in the world that hosts an intact community of large mammals … As human encroachment around the park becomes more intense, these species are forced to alter their behaviours in order to survive,” wrote DeepMind in a blog post.

“Increasing agriculture, poaching, and climate abnormalities contribute to changes in animal behaviors and population dynamics, but these changes have occurred at spatial and temporal scales which are difficult to monitor using traditional research methods.”

For nearly a decade, conservationists have tapped the aforementioned cameras to keep tabs on animals within the park’s core, enabling them to study their distribution and demography.

The images aren’t of much use absent annotations, however, which is why it’s fallen to volunteers to identify species by hand using a web-based tool called Zooniverse.

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