These days, artificial intelligence (AI) is making waves in the news, from impressive breakthroughs to the occasional hiccup like Google’s latest Gemini incident. While some folks worry about AI’s rapid progress and what it means for society, others see its potential to do good if it is used right. And Google’s latest move seems to be in the positive camp.
Google recently shared a paper explaining how its AI can predict floods up to a week in advance (via Android Headlines). How? By using data from existing gauges, Google’s AI crunches the numbers with powerful machine learning to figure out when floods tend to happen and what conditions make them likely. This insight is then applied to areas where we don’t have enough data.
Since 2017, Google has been on a mission to revolutionize flood forecasting, driven by the potential to save lives worldwide. The company has been hammering away at research while building a real-time flood forecasting system. This system sends out alerts through Google Search, Maps, Android notifications, and the Flood Hub.
According to Google, its machine learning tech can seriously boost global flood forecasting, especially in places where flood data is scarce. Thanks to these AI upgrades, the flood forecasting system can now predict floods up to five days in advance, even in places like Africa and Asia, where it used to be a guessing game compared to Europe.