Startups showed off some pretty cool new uses for artificial intelligence at the VivaTech trade fair in Paris last month. According to Phys.org, some companies can use AI to learn how to harness the power of ocean currents to travel more efficiently while using less fuel, and that could have a wide-ranging impact.
According to oceanographer Alexandre Stegner, AI models today "can calculate a weather forecast 1,000 times faster than a standard digital model running on a supercomputer."
Stegner said his company, Amphitrite, has developed an AI model that can forecast currents up to 10 days in advance by crunching "several layers of satellite data corresponding to different physical variables."
Sea captains could just have to slightly change course and use the currents to boost their speed by a little over 4 miles per hour while also saving money on fuel. While that may not sound like much, considering the distance most ships in the shipping industry have to travel, it's not insignificant.
While Stegner calls it "a simple way to save fuel," it's much more than that.
The global shipping industry is responsible for about 3% of planet-warming pollution, according to Transport & Environment, and that could go as high as 10% by 2050 if things don't change. Included in that seemingly small number of 3% of planet-warming pollution is an estimated 1 billion metric tons of carbon pollution annually, according to Ocean Conservancy.
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The use of these AI models will not only save those in the shipping industry money on fuel, but it will also greatly reduce the pollution that contributes to the overheating of the planet. That is a major factor in extreme weather like life-threatening storms and hurricanes, along with flooding and droughts, both of which can also be deadly and have a negative effect on the global food supply.
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