Preventing bear attacks with AI

There are plenty of reasons why I love living in the countryside, but one that freaks me out a little bit is the wildlife side of things. Bear attacks have been growing in frequency in our area over recent years, and one of them even happened right by Koide Station – a fairly populated area.

Pic credit: Pete Nuij/Unsplash

I was intrigued, then, to see an article online about Toyama Prefecture looking to help minimize bear attacks with the help of AI. The intent is to monitor live feeds from a variety of security cameras to identify bears in areas close to people, and send instant warnings to local authorities in those regions. They also plan to use AI for monitoring bears movement patterns to try and predict their future whereabouts.

I am all for it, and think this is a really clever way of using AI to hopefully minimize human injury or death in bear-prone areas.