USGS uses machine learning to show large lithium potential in Arkansas

Love to see a project that uses bog standard ML techniques and doesn't call them AI. Respect.

It's the new Hacking vs Cracking. Or calling any computer a PC.

Quoth the article:

  The USGS predictive model provides the first estimate of total lithium present in Smackover Formation brines in southern Arkansas, using machine learning, which is a type of artificial intelligence.

Nothing bog standard about contemporary ML. If anything calling it AI is underselling it.

This is what it was called back in the day. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02478259

When the tide goes out on the AI hype there’s going to be a lot of companies currently using expensive API calls for simple classification tasks that will be quietly revamped to use a simple CNN.

ML is a toolbox of methods. Not every problem needs a transformer.

I was disappointed in that line. They could’ve mentioned it used a random forest, which is much more informative. “ML is a type of AI” isn’t even a cocktail party understanding of the topic.

For a layperson, this is an accessible and directionally correct definition.

For the HN audience, of course this is 'technically incorrect'.

The article was written for the (larger) general public.

I am also glad they didn't squeeze in a word salad of LLMs and quantum technology and instead stuck to 'it's just standard ML'.

The only informational dividable from the statement is "we used a computer to analyze data".

In this case it's Fracking

ML is one particular field in the overall area of AI.

Isn’t it a critical component of everything currently sporting anything remotely close to a legit “AI” label? I wouldn’t call cows “one part of a broader beef ecosystem” for example. They’re fundamental to it.

Are we getting to the critical point where we declassify a bunch of stuff as AI? Used to be expert systems were considered AI. Now anything-not-an-LLM is going to stop being AI?

> Not every problem needs a transformer.

They do if they want to get the intention of a Venture Capitalist!

That treadmills been going on for a long time. Didn’t OCR used to be classified as AI?

Yep, back when programming language syntax started trending toward more natural language, compiler development was considered AI research. Which makes sense, because in an era of assembly on punch cards, computers that could translate higher-level instructions that read more like English into machine code you used to have to write (or punch) by hand probably felt pretty intelligent.

Venture Capitalist Attention Is All You Need!