Computer Vision and Intelligent Agents for Wildlife Conservation with Jason Holmberg

In this episode, I'm joined by Jason Holmberg, Executive Director and Director of Engineering at WildMe. Wildme's Wildbook and Whaleshark.org are both open source computer vision based conservation projects, that have been compared to a facebook for wildlife. Jason kicks us off with the interesting story of how wildbook came to be, and the eventual expansion of the project from a focus on whale sharks to include Giant Manta Rays, Humpback Whales, Zebras and Giraffes. Jason and I explore the evolution of these projects' use of computer vision and deep learning, the unique characteristics of the models they're building, and how they're ultimately enabling a new kind of citizen science. Finally, we take a look at a cool new "intelligent agent" project that Jason is working on, which mines YouTube for wildlife sightings and automatically engages with the relevant individuals and scientists on Wildbook's behalf.