“We’re taking what’s happening in artificial intelligence and applying it to mining,” says Richard Taylor, chief executive of Sensore.
“We’re borrowing what’s happening in the oil and gas sector.”
Oil and mining are very different, of course.
But the principle is the same: advanced learning and AI is capable of picking up patterns that the human eye or the human brain might very well fail to notice.
In this case the operative patterns are inside rock formations, and ideally will contain mineralisation.
But can this approach really add value?
One way of answering that question is to take a before and after approach.
“The success rate for greenfields exploration is terrible,” says Taylor.
“Oil and gas has a 20-30% success rate. In mining it’s down at less than 5%.”
Another way is to consider just how widely the enhanced capabilities of AI can be deployed.
In offering its targeting and prospectivity mapping services to clients, Sensore aims to analyse data from as much ground in and around any given prospect or district as possible. And this is no idle boast, because it goes up to and including a whole continent.
“We’re making a big digital twin of the Australian continent,” explains Taylor.
“Companies that just do work with their own data are myopic,” says Taylor.
“The difference with us is that other companies don’t spend any time analysing their neighour’s data. But where you have a mineralising event, you often have multiple mineralised events.”
So any given tenement of any given mining company can be put into the broadest possible geological context, and the prospectivity of specific bits of ground can be zeroed in on from there.
“Companies have never seen their tenement in the way we show it to them,” says Taylor.
And, while there’s never going to be an X marks the spot moment, even with artificial intelligence and machine learning, the argument is that it will at least lift exploration success rates up towards that oil and gas industry level.
Already, Sensore is enjoying significant demand for its products and services.
And why wouldn’t it? The exploration sector is awash with companies competing with each other for the attention of investors and, as a whole, the sector has to compete with a range of other sectors where it’s much easier to model expected returns.
Anything which narrows the uncertainties involved in mining exploration ought to be hugely popular.
But within mining itself there are specific areas in which Sensore’s approach really shines.
“The base metals space is the sweet spot,” says Taylor.
“Base metals leave big footprints, so they’re easier to find.”
But as far as feeding existing data into the AI goes, precious metals has the edge. And that’s because everyone always assays for gold.
Which explains the diverse nature of the of blue-chip mining and investment partners Sensore has been able to attract. BHP’s a shareholder, and it has joint ventures with Chalice, one of the big exploration success stories of recent years, among other partners.
Now, though, Sensore is looking to step it up a gear.
The company is in the final stretch of a A$10mlm fundraising that’s been put together to allow it to move much of its offering onto the Cloud, and to roll out a new data platform.
And how significant could demand be for Sensore’s new platform?
Given all that it can offer, the answer has to be: pretty significant.
Put that alongside Sensore’s own exploration projects, from which newsflow will is expected in due course, and what you’re presented with is a compelling vision of the future of mining.