These Algorithms Are Hunting for an EV Battery Mother Lode

"These things are hard to tip over," geologist Wilson Bonner assures me as the four-wheeled all-terrain vehicle he's piloting tilts suddenly sideways, pitching me toward the churned up mud beneath our wheels. We're grinding up the side of a thickly forested hill in rural Ontario, Canada, on a chilly fall day, heading toward a spot that Bonner's employer, startup KoBold Metals, says represents the marriage of cutting-edge artificial intelligence with one of humanity's oldest industries. We do indeed complete the half-hour trek relatively unmuddied, finally breaking through a ring of broken trees and mangled brush into a swath of bulldozed mud. A black pipe about as wide around as my arm juts out of the ground--the top end of a hole nearly a kilometer deep that was punched into the ground by a truck-sized drilling rig that sits idly nearby. It's not much to look at, but this hole might mark a step into the future of mining, an industry crucial for the world's transition to renewable energy.