For those of use who like to surf or swim in exotic places (read: the hometowns of sharks), there is now a way to make our lives a bit safer. In Australia the number of attacks by sharks on swimmers and surfers has increased in the past years. The number of attacks is still very low, but the Australian government decided to start experimenting with new ways to prevent attacks and the unnecessary killing of sharks.
The solution that seems most promising at the moment is a drone that uses artificial intelligence to spot sharks. While the first prototypes of this drone were produced in 2016, it is finally time to actually start using them now. The drones will fly above the coast lines of New South Wales to spot sharks that are invisible to the eye of the surfers or swimmers. The drones are three times better in recognizing sharks than the human eye and they have a 92% success rate in spotting sharks.
Currently, the drones do not operate completely by themselves. The images they produce are viewed by humans, the so called drone pilots on the beach. They can check if the system is missing a shark, or when a shark is spotted correctly, they can warn the people in the water. Another convenient future that the drone has, but humans do not is that it can drop a flotation device in the water when a swimmer or surfer needs it.
I think the shark spotting drone will help lifeguards in doing their work, but it will not replace them, as AI will almost never replace jobs entirely (Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2017). Lifeguards will always be needed in case a person is in a dangerous situation in the water and they can’t safe themselves. Furthermore, the drone pilots or life guards are necessary to check whether the AI system spotted a real shark or if it is just spotting a surfer or another floating object, so the shark alarm will not go off an make people panic without a reason.
Another reason to keep life guards and other staff in place is that there are lives at stake when the drone does not see a shark when it is approaching an area where people are in the water. With a 92% success rate, the drone is doing very well, but not well enough to operate on its own. However, this does not mean that the shark spotting drones can’t seriously increase the amount of sharks that are spotted by the life guards. Since it views the sea from above, it shows a very broad image of the coast line, where the lifeguards can only see a small part of the water from the coast or from their boats. Moreover, AI is getting better at image recognition at a fast pace as a result of deep learning (Brynjoflsson and McAfee, 2017). Therefore, in the future the success rate of the drone might be higher, but chances that it will ever be 100% are very small.
For now, the drone using AI seems like a very good solution to the problem. In the future developers might even be able to expand the activities of the drones, for example by spotting surfers or swimmers who have floated away from the coast because of strong current.
Do you think you would feel safer in the water with this device flying above you? And do you think it has potential to completely replace human life guards in the future?
References:
BBC News. (2017). Must See – BBC News. [online] Available at:
http://www.bbc.com/news/video_and_audio/must_see/41640146/a-bird-s-eye-view-of-sharks [Accessed 17 Oct. 2017].
Brynjolfsson, E. and McAfee, A. 2017. The Business of Artificial
Intelligence. Harvard Business Review.
Interesting article! The drones offer some serious advantages, especially when their success rate increases even further. As you stated in the article, drones could also be used to spot swimmers and surfers in dangerous situations. However, for these kinds of features, 92% success rate would be very dangerous. The danger of this is that the lifeguards will start to rely on the drones too much due to the high success rate. This is likely to lower their awareness and focus on the beachgoers, which could easily result in them missing life threatening situations. Technology can help us greatly, but we shouldn’t fully rely on it before it is fully safe to do so!
I like how this seems to be a rather elegant solution to a pressing problem. Both those going to the beach are safe from any harm plus the sharks themselves aren’t affected in any way. Using artifical intelligence and manually piloted drones is a nice solution to shark attacks, but I do worry about potential other uses. If someone with bad intentions wants to use it for tracking shark to make shark fin soup, there are no safeguards. As I assume that this kind of technology can be adapted to detect all kinds of animals, there’s a high chance that it is going to be abused by poachers and illegal fishers. Then it’s worth wondering if the benefits weigh up against the risks.
I’d like to hear your thoughts on this
Very interesting development, I had not heard of this before. I think I would definitely feel safer with this device as an ‘extra’ tool, but I am not sure if I would feel comfortable if this would lead to less attention of life guards towards spotting sharks, especially since the success rate is “only” 92%. Like you said, lives are at stake here. Also, I was wondering, you mention “drone pilots” that warn the people in the water, but maybe the drone itself could also become a visual warning sign? For example, by flashing lights or changing colors/dragging a flag. Or maybe, with all the Fitbits and (smart) sportwatches there could even be a personalized warning message, like an SOS sign in morse code, vibrating through your watch, possibly including the distance between you and the shark. So I certainly see a lot of benefits from this drone, but I think it will never completele replace life guards, as human interaction might be necessary when people need to get pulled out of the water or are panicking and need emotional support to calm down.
Hello, R.M. Corstanje, nice blog post and what an exciting topic.
I believe that it is super interesting to see how A.I., something that people often see as something beyond their understanding and only used in fancy businesses can really have an impact in something so close to everyone and in a simple way.
Regarding your first question, yes, I would feel safer with the device flying above me but, and like this answering your second question, I would not feel safer without the presence of a life guard as well. In my opinion, drones will never replace lifesavers completely in a near future, as latter’s competences extend to more than saving swimmers in distress, once they are also necessary to help people get out of water and will still be needed to pay assistance after the drone helps the people at risk. However, I believe that in a near future the drones will remove the necessity of lifeguards going into to the water. What do you think? Of course, that in long term anything is possible and can/will probably happen.
Additionally, I believe these drones would be a great complement in to any beach and not just in the ones that have great affluence of surfers. Imagine impact it would have in any normal beach just by helping save lives of people that are dragged by strong currents (or simply are in distressed) and like this a life can be saved with the flotation device, without risking the security of the lifeguard. Overall, an really interesting topic and an area where I see A.I. having a great impact.
Great blog post! This is a very interesting topic that could potentially save lives in the near future, which is pretty amazing.
The uses of this sort of technology are, in my opinion, endless. Not only could drones be used to spot sharks in the water or replace lifeguards, they could be used for other life-saving situations. For example, I was born and raised in a small town in Northern Canada. In our area, we often get lost hikers who require assistance from search and rescue teams after they fail to return after their planned excursion. Often these search and rescue teams face grave danger with inclement weather and unsafe hiking conditions. If drones with AI could be used in these sorts of situations to look for signs of distressed hikers, it could make the search faster and way more safe. I think AI technology could play a big role in automating some of the jobs that require unsafe working conditions or life and death situations. As you mentioned above, having eyes in the sky could be a potential life saver!
In addition, I think there could be some use of AI in the water as well. I once watched a documentary about a team that was developing a device that could be placed underwater that could sense a shark’s approach and produce a signal to both ward off the shark and alert the lifeguarding team. I think that using applying the latest AI developments to a technology like this could have a massive positive result.
Thanks for bringing up this topic. Really interesting discussion!
Allie