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 Artificial intelligence A $150,000 reward is up for grabs for any data scientist who can write code for facial recognition software that can pinpoint illegal catch on fishing boats A catch of tuna trans-shipped from an illegal, unregistered and unlicensed (IUU) purse seine fishing vessel.
 As illegal fishing continues to grow, scientists are turning to data and artificial intelligence to help stem the problem.
 unlicensed (IUU) purse seine fishing vessel.
 As illegal fishing continues to grow, scientists are turning to data and artificial intelligence to help stem the problem.
 Photograph: Alex Hofford/AFP/Getty Images Guardian sustainable business The new bottom line The latest weapon in the fight against illegal fishing?
 Artificial intelligence A $150,000 reward is up for grabs for any data scientist who can write code for facial recognition software that can pinpoint illegal catch on fishing boats Mary Catherine O'Connor @mcoc Sun 20 Nov ‘16 15.
00 GMT Last modified on Fri 14 Jul ‘17 19.
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 The larger the database, with a greater variety of facial features, the smarter and more successful the software becomes – effectively learning from its mistakes to improve its accuracy.
 The government wants more offshore fish farms, but no one is biting Read more Now, this type of artificial intelligence is starting to be used in fighting a specific but pervasive type of crime – illegal fishing.
 Rather than picking out faces, the software tracks the movement of fishing boats to root out illegal behavior.
 And soon, using a twist on facial recognition, it may be able to recognize when a boat’s haul includes endangered and protected fish.
 The latest effort to use artificial intelligence to fight illegal fishing is coming from Virginia-based The Nature Conservancy (TNC), which launched a contest on Kaggle – a crowdsourcing site based in San Francisco that uses competitions to advance data science –earlier this week.
 TNC hopes the winning team will write software to identify specific species of fish.
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 Given those challenges, it’s too early to know how large this market will grow, or how quickly.
 While the use of artificial intelligence to reduce illegal catch is relatively new, the Kaggle contest isn’t the first time it is being applied to the fishing industry.
 San Francisco-based startup Pelagic Data Systems (PDS) has developed technology that illuminates the activity of some of the 4.
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” Oysters are making a comeback in the polluted waters around New York City Read more But, he adds, Silicon Valley does provide important undergirding for using technology to solve environmental problems.
 Bosworth argues that the advancement in core technologies behind things like multiplayer gaming software and smartphone apps has propelled the rise of machine learning and artificial intelligence and lowered the development costs over time.
 The winning team of the contest will earn a prize of $150,000.