The data miner

Maura Kolb is more familiar with analyzing rock samples than computer code, but as exploration manager at Goldcorp's Red Lake gold mine, she now finds herself in charge of an innovative approach to exploration that involves both. The project, in partnership with IBM, uses IBM's Watson artificial intelligence platform to identify exploration targets at the Ontario mine. Since the project was launched in March 2017 at the Disrupt Mining event at PDAC, Goldcorp says the time it takes to process survey data has fallen by 97 per cent. "Being able to go through [our data] quickly, that's something no one else can do right now," said Kolb. "We can ask questions of our data that we haven't been able to in the past." The main goal of the project is to use Watson to help identify high-grade areas at Red Lake that were previously overlooked by human eyes.