WIRED magazine

Professor Ian Bateman featured in WIRED magazine

Professor Ian Bateman (Director - LEEP Institute, University of Exeter Business School) was interviewed for WIRED magazine's article, 'From ethics to accountability, this is how AI will suck less in 2019'.

Learning the lay of the land
As populations urbanise, and food and water security continue to be major concerns, machine learning will help us make the most of the land we have. Take farming.

“The Farm Census in England is now only conducted every ten years providing data which is then clumped together into 2 km squares,” says Professor Ian Bateman, director of the Land, Environment, Economics and Policy Institute, which is using AI to enhance land surveys. “Satellites provide a complete map of the country in less than a week, every week, and in tremendous detail. Machine learning techniques can turn that tsunami of data into clearly interpretable information, discovering messages that would take researchers an unfeasibly long time to discover,” he adds.

“Our hope is that by the end of 2019 we will have used machine learning techniques to bring earth observation data into our understanding of how land use can be changed in ways which allow policymakers to make decisions which are good for farmers, good for society and good for the environment.”

The full article, written by Emma Byrne, can be accessed here.

Date: 27 December 2018