Companies Are Using AI to Evaluate Biodiversity Threats

Ben Williams sits quietly in his London apartment, waiting for a very specific sound to emerge from his headphones. He’ll know it when he hears it: Williams says the short, percussive bang “can shake you out of your skin.”

A PhD student in marine ecology at University College London, Williams is listening to underwater recordings captured in the Indo-Pacific for acoustic evidence of blast fishing, a destructive practice that uses explosives to kill or stun fish. His findings are critical to Google DeepMind — where Williams is a student researcher — which is using them to train an AI tool known as SurfPerch. ...