Dem
51
GOP
49
This item is about drones and Ukraine. Knowing that, you would probably assume that, in some way, it's a downer of an item about how the U.S. is going to help Volodymyr Zelenskyy kill Russians more efficiently.
If you did assume that, however, you would be wrong. After all, this is a freudenfreude piece. In this case, the drones are not under military control, they belong to Safe Pro AI, a startup company founded by a pair of computer scientists named Gabriel Steinberg and Jasper Baur. The two men are part of a community of activists that has been working on the problem of unexploded land mines (and other ordinance). There are at least 60 countries with such hazardous material, resulting in roughly 5,000 people being killed or injured each year. And thanks to having been the site of numerous recent conflicts, Ukraine is considered to be the single-most landmine-contaminated country in the world.
The normal process for identifying landmines for removal is both laborious and dangerous. That's where Safe Pro AI and their drones come in. The drones fly over a large area and take tens of thousands of images. Then, the images are analyzed by AI to find where the ordinance is, so that it might be removed. Steinberg and Baur are still refining their process, but in a demonstration for the U.N., they managed to accurately scan and analyze an area of 25 hectares (about 60 football fields) in 3 days (most of that was data crunching; the actual drone portion took about 5 hours). Altogether, the two scientists think they can reduce the number of man hours needed for effective minesweeping by 99% or more. If you would like to read more, Baur has produced a more detailed (but still readable) report here.
On reading about this, we could not help but think of Isaiah 2:3-4:
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Turning drones into minesweepers sure looks to us like the modern-day equivalent of beating swords into plowshares. Certainly, it's a much more noble use of the technology than killing more people. Congrats to Steinberg and Baur on their work, and have a good weekend, all! (Z)