Global miners join the hunt for AI experts
For an industry perceived as slow-moving and macho, attracting prized AI workers can be as difficult as striking gold
Toronto — Barrick Gold, the world’s biggest gold miner, is staking new ground in a dogged push to overhaul its operations, seeking scarce artificial intelligence experts to oversee projects using technology for everything from exploration to robot-run mining. But for an industry perceived as slow-moving and macho, attracting prized human resources can be as difficult as striking gold — particularly as technology titans like Facebook and Alphabet’s Google chase the same talent. Though the mining sector is late to the so-called "digitisation" party, Barrick and others are compelled to push productivity gains in the face of rising costs and depleting resources. Miners are stepping up investments in technology that ranges from driverless trucks to computers that sift through and make sense of mountains of data from operations. That shift could deliver global efficiency gains of $373bn by 2025 for the industry and its stakeholders, estimates consulting giant McKinsey & Co. "There’s so mu...
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