Exploration
integrated throughout intelligence, replacing the expert knowledge in many areas, including decision- making. Similarly, he makes comparisons between mining and the fintech sector. “We called it ‘finance’ before it was called ‘fintech’,” he jokes. “There is no reason why mining will not be called ‘minetech’ as well. This is already happening.”
Most ‘easy’ sources of minerals have already been located and mined, requiring more advanced methods of mineral extraction.
land area, with the remaining 80% covered by a few hundred metres of the aforementioned regolith, creating huge opportunity for mineral exploration. “The traditional industry today is based on prospecting and expertise that goes back centuries,” says Frastai. “But it can no longer find manifestations [of valuable ore] on the surface of the covered areas, so you need a different way to approach the problem.”
99% KoBold Metals 30
The percentage of mineral exploration projects that fail to become mines.
This is where AI comes in. Rather than searching on the physical surface, AI instead can help sort through huge swathes of information from the subsurface and identify relevant data within it. VerAI’s solution, says Frastai, is tailored to deal with this exact challenge, setting it apart from how others in the sector approach the problem when approaching massive amounts of data. “We are highly focused on the geophysical data,” he explains. “And this allows us to eventually see patterns that [traditional exploration] experts cannot detect using simple and limited hypothesis.” This, of course, can pose a challenge when pitching AI to a traditional industry like mining, which can be slow to embrace new technologies and ways of doing things – or, as Frastai puts it, “release itself from hypotheses and practices that belong to the 19th century”. VerAI’s CEO, however, remains optimistic, seeing both the challenge for mineral discovery and exploration and the opportunity that AI offers as unique. “If you think about medicine and the complexity of the human body, AI is dealing with discovery targets that are changing and evolving all the time,” he says. “In our case, the ore bodies we are going after formed millions of years ago, and it’s not moving, and it’s not changing – at least in our lifetime.” This perspective is shaped by experience, coming after more than 25 years working in intelligence and homeland security. Over the past 15 years, he witnessed a huge cultural shift as machines and algorithms gradually became more and more
Delve into the data VerAI has trained its AI systems to search for minerals like lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, gold, silver and molybdenum, and Frastai highlights copper to serve as the case in point when describing how these systems function. “Copper is well-known and there are several types of mineral copper out there that people are trying to target,” he says, by way of explanation. “One of the very large mineralisation types that people would very much like to find are called ‘porphyry copper deposits’ (PCDs).” What VerAI’s systems found notable about PCDs it that examples with the exact same mineralisation type can have very different signatures depending on its geological area. “It’s not because the mineral system is so different, [it’s] that the relationship with the hosting geological setting impacts the pattern that the algorithm is eventually able to find,” Frastai notes. VerAI is well-versed in how to adapt to these challenges, Frastai stresses, but he brings these issues up to highlight that the solution is not as simple as merely inputting data and receiving the results you’re looking for. Geological knowledge is vital to set the right conditions for a successful search. “You can’t approach this problem without relevant geoscience knowledge that allow you to put things in the right context and to define your discovery problem upfront.” Essentially, VerAI develops models or profiles based on existing economic deposits, and then uses that large and diverse library of profiles to search through datasets to identify locations that have the same pattern that could have been missed by traditional exploration methods. Of course, human expertise is always required to provide oversight for these findings, but this technology provides a great opportunity when conducted properly.
An opportunity to inform and collaborate with communities While identifying unknown deposits of critical minerals for the energy transition is key to VerAI’s work, it’s also important to the company that as humanity mines more and more of these materials that we bear in mind the cost to the environment and to communities. “The way to do it is to do responsible exploration and responsible mining in our backyard,” Frastai stresses.
World Mining Frontiers /
www.nsenergybusiness.com
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