An AI-powered eye in the sky is helping firefighters control woodland blazes. California used maps drawn by neural networks to fight fires that threatened Yosemite National Park earlier this year.

The White House called for new funding for AI research including a constellation of research centers. Nonetheless, the U.S. government’s annual spending on the technology still would lag behind that of several other

Neural networks learned to tell one bird from another, enabling scientists to study their behavior in greater detail. Researchers from universities in Europe and Africa trained eural networks to recognize individual birds with up to 90 percent accuracy.

The ocean contains distinct ecosystems, but they’re much harder to see than terrestrial forests or savannas. A new model helps scientists better understand patterns of undersea life, which is threatened by pollution, invasive species, and warming temperatures.

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are developing machine learning tools for the fossil fuel industry even as they pledge to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

A machine learning model is scanning the oceans for the glint of garbage. Researchers from the UK’s Plymouth Marine Laboratory trained a model to identify ocean-borne refuse.

Deep learning promises to help emergency responders find their way through disaster zones. MIT researchers developed a tool that maps where hurricanes and other calamities have wiped out roads, helping to show aid workers the fastest ways to get to people in need.

Last week we reported on a formula to determine model width and dataset size for optimal performance. A new paper contributes equations that optimize some training parameters.

Female giant pandas are fertile for only 24 to 36 hours a year: Valentine’s Day on steroids. A new neural network alerts human keepers when a panda couple mates.

Severe heat waves and cold snaps are especially hard to forecast because atmospheric perturbations can have effects that are difficult to compute. Neural networks show promise where typical methods have stumbled.

Solar-thermal power plants concentrate the sun’s energy using huge arrays of mirrors. AI is helping those arrays stay in focus.

A deep learning system is helping biologists who survey offshore fish populations to prevent overfishing. The U.S. agency in charge of protecting ocean resources is using an underwater camera and neural network to count fish in real time.