Here’s how Facebook is making the most detailed maps of the world’s population with artificial intelligence and solar-powered planes
Facebook has revealed new images of its ambitious project to map the world's population using artificial intelligence and solar-powered planes.
The video, published by Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg, shows the incredibly detailed images of areas around the world where AI technology has enhanced even the most state of the art pictures we have had previously.
State of the art images before
Images after Facebook AI enhancement
"Many people live in remote communities and accurate data on where people live doesn't always exist. We can't beam internet connectivity to people if we don't know where communities are, so we built AI technology to analyse 15.6bn satellite images to create much more accurate population maps across 21.6m km sq of Earth," said Zuckerberg in a Facebook update.
Facebook will share the fruits of the project, making all the maps openly available, which it hopes can help with major infrastructure planning in these remote areas such as energy, health and transport as well as disaster planning.
This is an impressive project from our team developing solar-powered planes for beaming down internet connectivity and…
Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Monday, 7 March 2016