学进去

There aren’t enough resources to identify and cure the factors that are causing populations of animals around the world to decline. Artificial intelligence might have the power to change that.

When an endangered seabird hits a power line, it ________ “very much like the laser noise from Star Wars,” says preservation biologist Marc Travers. He should know, as his team from the Endangered Seabird Recovery Project recorded thousands of hours of audio to determine if power lines ________ local seabirds. Travers was trying to establish how ________ birds were killed by power lines on the island of Kauai in Hawaii in 2011.

His team recorded 600 hours of audio and sent the recordings to Preservation Metrics, a company that assists preservation efforts with AI ________. Preservation Metrics used a program to “listen” to the recordings and check off the sounds that signified bird electrocutions (电击). The result was ________, as the number of bird electrocutions was in the thousands. ________ proof that power lines were killing a significant number of birds, the team worked with the local utility (公共设施) service to reduce bird deaths.

In science fiction stories such as The Matrix, AI-powered machines take over the world and end life on the planet as we know it. But ________, programs that use AI to sort through mountains of data might just save some species from disappearing permanently.

By many ________, humans have been poor keepers of the planet. Humans have altered as much as 97 percent of land ecosystems. Key populations of monitored animals have declined as much as 68 percent since 1970. The decline in ________ around the world has created a miserable situation. Preservation efforts ________ key resources they need to be effective.

Humans, ________, fortunately have AI-based tools that can help now. AI can quickly and accurately sort through large amounts of data created by observations in the field. Then other programs such as PAWS (Protection Assistant for Wildlife Security) can help analyse the data and suggest the most effective ways to focus preservation efforts.

In large national parks and wildlife reserves, ________ hunters are a danger for animals both big and small. Some animals are worth a lot of money on the black market. Park keepers are left with a(n) ________ task because there is too much land to cover. But the PAWS programme allows park keepers to focus their efforts. PAWS has even ________ the existence of trap lines in areas not yet watched by park keepers!

We still face many challenges to ________ the loss of wildlife, but AI-powered programs promise to be a powerful preservation tool.