With the “Planetary Computer” Microsoft wants to help conservationists and science to analyze data for environmental protection. Today the tech giant presented its latest efforts in the area of AI.
“Planetary Computer” should help to fight the extinction of species as efficiently as possible and strengthen the ecosystem. Artificial intelligence is part of the “AI for Earth” project, in which Microsoft already supports more than 500 organizations with various programs.
“Microsoft’s new biodiversity initiative is multi-faceted. Perhaps most importantly, it aims to put data and digital technology to work, including through an ambitious program to aggregate environmental data from around the world and put it to work in a new Planetary Computer.”
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An example of such an action comes from Australia, where the environmental authority used AI to evaluate underwater images in a matter of seconds to record local fish stocks. The AI of the project learned to distinguish between the different fish species in the video and was thus able to count them.
According to Microsoft, the “Planetary Computer” can use satellite images to analyse the belly density of forests or evaluate measurement data from water bodies in order to identify problems in the ecosystem at an early stage.
The new AI system will eventually store several trillion data points and show the state of the various global ecosystems and how they can be optimised.