Veteran metallurgist and former BHP global innovation lead, Cleve Lightfoot sees significant new technology-led change coming to mining. But, by way of a caution, he quotes English military historian Basil Liddell Hart: “The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old idea out.”
“Just change the military mind to the mining mind,” says Lightfoot, who has joined Cambridge-based mining AI tech company IntelliSense’s management team.
Artificial intelligence may not be a new idea, as such. But it could be a pivotal agent in the mining industry’s efforts to leverage the best of what’s in its “corporate memory” to drive vital new operational improvements, Lightfoot believes.
He met IntelliSense’s founder, Sam Bose, about eight years ago and evidently likes the progress the UK-based firm has made. He sees a robust commercial intersection with mining’s compounding digital maturity in some parts of the world.
