Artificial Intelligence, Facial Recognition, and … Fish?

If you are a tech-savvy, ecologically-minded entrepreneur, then have we got news for you. Artificial Intelligence is capable of many things, and responsible for many more things than the average person may want to know about. You may already be aware that artificial intelligence is used in those dazzling fast facial recognition searches so often featured in police procedurals. Face and body recognition are a controversial, daily reality around the world.

Fish Recognition

Now, as reported in The Guardian, the non-profit environmental group Nature Conservancy is seeking interested parties to create fish recognition algorithms. Similar to the facial recognition algorithms which pick out unique facial features from amidst a crowd, the hoped-for smart program will identify specific kinds of protected fish. If successful, this software will assist inspectors and honest fishing vessels alike, drastically cutting down on inspection times while enhancing accuracy. For those actively engaging in illegal fishing, however, the news will be less good.

Real Problems In Need of Real Solutions

Illegal fishing costs the world economy an estimated $20 billion a year. Like many of the problems that artificial intelligence is being called upon to address, this one is big, literally too big for human minds and eyes to handle on their own. Smart computers can help, and smart computer programmers can help make those smart computers.

For more information, including details on the machine learning contests, visit Kaggle’s site - The Nature Conservancy Fisheries Monitoring.