BHP: Targeted AI Platforms Boost Efficiency, Safety and More
Modern society has a metals problem. The demands of modern consumer culture, the energy transition and the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics have created a dilemma.
As demand rises, the supply of many metals is at a bottleneck brought about by a number of factors, from government red tape to civil unrest, as well as lack of capital expenditures leading to fewer new discoveries and mines.
On top of this, mining companies focused on essential metals like copper are facing additional challenges, as in many cases the easy discoveries have already been made and existing mines are seeing declining grades, causing further constraints to supply.
BHP (ASX:BHP,NYSE:BHP,LSE:BHP) Digital Officer Mikko Tepponen suggests that the very technologies that rely on metals and mining can be the answer in his presentation at the 2026 Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada conference.
Addressing data fragmentation in exploration
Once companies open up capital expenditures to the exploration side of the mining sector, several questions arise, most notably: Where are the minerals?
At its core, exploration relies on the geosciences, with a geologist in the field, sampling rocks, conducting surveys and using the data gathered to estimate where the best place is to put a drill for a look below the surface.
Mining is a data-driven enterprise, and depending on the project, the information can come from a range of methods, from modern techniques to historic observations, meaning the data is fragmented across a variety of sources and formats.
AI and machine learning can be good at processing and interpolating large quantities of information. However, data accessibility creates another roadblock.
“Across our industry, vast volumes of exploration data are sealed in archive rooms, and legacy systems can’t read through third-party data sets,” Tepponen said. “That data is neither structured, searchable nor interoperable. That means AI cannot make easy sense of it, and in many cases, that data was never extracted.”
For Tepponen, one of the challenges the mining industry needs to overcome is data fragmentation. Without enough data or proper information, there is an increased risk of making the wrong exploration decisions.
“Time matters because capital is finite. Drill meters are expensive, and decisions about capital allocation have multi-year impacts down the line,” he said.
The way BHP has implemented a data-centric approach is building a central data platform that integrates the decades of exploration data, standardizes it and makes it accessible through a central team within the company.
Tepponen says the platform supports 52 standardized core geoscience types, backed by more than 100 years of data, helping its exploration teams save months of time.
“Our geoscientists can access more than 4 million drill hole cores and 9,000 geophysical surveys through one portal,” he…
Read More: BHP: Targeted AI Platforms Boost Efficiency, Safety and More