7th Oct
Professor Pete Burgess
University of Liverpool
Presidential Address:
Artificial Intelligence in Geoscience:How it works and why it often doesn’t.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been headline news in recent years, but how does it work, and what does this new technology mean for geoscience? Will AI revolutionise geoscience as often claimed, or is this just the latest in a long serious of bubbles with exaggerated claims of AI capability? This talk will explain the basics of how the latest AI methods work and show examples of
how it can be very useful, but also explain the limitations that mean AI often does not work as well as required, and make an argument that true and truly useful machine intelligence has not yet been invented; Sarah Connor is likely safe for a while yet.
14th Oct
Dr. Rob Duller
University of Liverpool
Alluvial stratigraphic architecture viewed through a mass-balance lens.
The arrangement of river channel deposits within floodplain deposits is known as fluvial architecture (FA). This represents heterogeneity that impacts how fluids and gases move through or are stored within these deposits. For more than fifty years, geologists have sought to understand how FA is generated. Using an experimental delta where we observe surface process and the strata generated, we find that simple rules emerge over time that can describe FA, even on Mars! From an educational standpoint, we recognise a key misconception of the role of subsidence rate in FA generation.
