Emily King, founder of Prospector - a digital platform which uses AI to connect investors to mining companies - said the mining industry needed to communicate differently to attract individuals she termed "conversion investors", who she said interpret and analyse data differently to typical mining investors. 

 

"We've got to talk about mining and mining investment in a different way," said King.

 

She said AI tools were "really powerful" in helping investors unfamiliar with the sector sift through and query huge volumes of mining company data, helping to create models and predictions, and providing the answers they need before making an investment decision.

 

"That's part of what we're using AI to do: to communicate and help those investors make decisions that feel more comfortable and more modern, walks them through the decision process and gets them over to the right mining company," King said. 

 

"We see AI as a tool to de-risk a project", she told the summit. 

 

King said it was important to win over new investors to fund the slew of projects needed to cope with future demand for metals in a lower carbon world.

 

"There's all this discussion about the low-carbon economy, everyone wants electric vehicles, wind turbines, all these great things that often the population at large often forgets - it's all made out of metal," she said. 

 

"If we're going to do all of these things, we're going to need a lot more copper, cobalt, lithium; [capital] can't keep coming from the same old sources that have been investing in mining for several decades." 

 

"Our goal is to help good projects get the eyeballs of investors. You can use this technology to build more mines for the future we all say we want." 

 

Despite pointing to other areas of use for AI - such as exploration - King cautioned against overreliance on such disruptive technology, and said humans - not machines - would still make the decisions. 

 

"We like to use AI to help you get to that decision faster, but you still need to make the decision," she said.

 

Understanding how the technology works will also be crucial to its successful deployment, she said.

 

"If you don't understand how [AI tools] are built, and how you're using them, you may not understand why it is recommending one option over another," she added.