Can AI be used to solve major planetary problems? Today I'm joined by the CEO and Co-Founder of Astraea, Daniel Bailey, to talk about leveraging geospatial data for sustainability pursuits. Astraea's platform uses satellite imagery and AI to enable customers to access and operationalize spatiotemporal insights across multiple industries including clean energy, agriculture, conservation, carbon finance, and real estate.

Daniel fills us in on the issues Astraea aims to solve and the role of machine learning in its mission. We find out what makes satellite imagery unique (and uniquely challenging to work with) and how Astraea ensures that its models continue to meet customers’ needs over time. Daniel shares insight into the ML development process and advice for other leaders of AI-powered startups. Tune in to discover the balance between model accuracy and explainability, the importance of transparency when it comes to voluntary carbon markets, and more!

Key Points:

Daniel Bailey’s background and how it led him to create Astraea.
What Astraea does; the planetary problems it aims to solve.
The role of machine learning in Astraea’s technology.
The insights Astraea extracts from satellite data and the models they use to do so.
What makes satellite imagery unique (and uniquely challenging to work with).
How Astraea ensures their models continue to meet customers’ needs over time.
The balance between model accuracy and explainability.
Astraea’s ML development process.
The first steps to solving the business case with ML.
The importance of involving stakeholders in the development process.
Daniel’s advice for other leaders of AI-powered startups.
Why it’s critical to stay focused on the business needs.
The training data required to meet global needs.
Daniel’s vision for the future impact of Astraea.

Quotes:

“We're in this golden age of measurement. There's more data than you can look at individually. You really have to have something like AI/ML to recognize those patterns and extract those valuable insights from the data.” — Daniel Bailey

“Satellite imagery is a unique beast, for sure … The dimensionality of the data is completely unique.” — Daniel Bailey

“We do champion challenger techniques so that when we have a model in production, we're constantly looking for a better model and innovating on that capability.” — Daniel Bailey

“Without transparency, the voluntary market will collapse. We will never reach our goal of a two-degree Celsius without the voluntary carbon markets that are by nature a deregulated marketplace.” — Daniel Bailey

“When we think about creating ML products and features within the product, we think about using the most simplistic approach first.” — Daniel Bailey

“In the geospatial AI space, it is going to take a community to provide the capabilities we need to resolve some of these intractable problems we're facing as a planet.” — Daniel Bailey

“We need more training data to build better models to meet the needs that we're seeing globally.” — Daniel Bailey

Links:

Daniel Bailey on LinkedIn

Daniel Bailey on Twitter

Astraea

Astraea on LinkedIn

Astraea on Twitter

Resources for Computer Vision Teams:

LinkedIn – Connect with Heather.

Computer Vision Insights Newsletter – A biweekly newsletter to help bring the latest machine learning and computer vision research to applications in people and planetary health.

Computer Vision Strategy Session – Not sure how to advance your computer vision project? Get unstuck with a clear set of next steps. Schedule a 1 hour strategy session now to advance your project.

Computer Vision Advisory Services – Monthly advisory services to help you strategically plan your CV/ML capabilities, reduce the trial-and-error of model development, and get to market faster.

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