Using solar power, machine learning and her family’s patio umbrella, 18-year-old Selina Zhang created a synthetic tree that lures the destructive species
Unfortunately, they just had to cram AI into the headlines as the latest buzzword in an effort to potentially paint Selina Zhang as a young prodigy.
The AI part really is the least interesting bit - reading their published paper, they trained a YOLO network on self collected images.
What impressed me more was the overall (scientific) approach, the application of knowledge from various domains (i. e. using an ultrasonic diffuser to attract lanternbugs, some EE work for the “zapper net”, plus the programming / AI part, still) and the sheer perseverance of doing actual science and publishing a proper paper.
I have personally reviewed papers for journals and conferences where the authors clearly displayed less rigor.
/https%3A%2F%2Ftf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Ffiler_public%2F7a%2Fa2%2F7aa25226-6b5d-449b-8876-24884d84dd50%2Fselina_zhang_and_artreeficial.jpeg)
I agree with the other comments, great work.
Unfortunately, they just had to cram AI into the headlines as the latest buzzword in an effort to potentially paint Selina Zhang as a young prodigy.
The AI part really is the least interesting bit - reading their published paper, they trained a YOLO network on self collected images.
What impressed me more was the overall (scientific) approach, the application of knowledge from various domains (i. e. using an ultrasonic diffuser to attract lanternbugs, some EE work for the “zapper net”, plus the programming / AI part, still) and the sheer perseverance of doing actual science and publishing a proper paper.
I have personally reviewed papers for journals and conferences where the authors clearly displayed less rigor.