AI AND
DINOSAURS Paleontologists help us understand the history of life on Earth through their study of fossils, which they manually identify by examining the fossils’ geometry and other features. But what if they had a faster, easier, and more effective way to classify these ancient traces of life?
By Gabriella Grundy, senior business-public relations major
20
Columns
Photo: Mila Bales
S
outhern Adventist University’s Biology and Allied Health Department and School of Computing have collaborated on a project that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically identify dinosaur teeth. The project applies the form of AI known as deep learning, which uses artificial neural networks to learn from data and solve complex problems. Harvey Alférez, PhD, professor and director of the Center for Innovation and Research in Computing (CIRC) in the School of Computing, and Keith Snyder, PhD, chair of the Biology and Allied Health Department, began formulating the idea for the project in Fall 2022. They wanted to explore the possibility of using deep learning