As demand for critical minerals continues to increase globally, the need to explore for and identify mineral resources quicker than before has mounted, raising the need for integrated decision-making data.

Despite increased demand, the market is still risk averse in terms of exploration.

“There is your dichotomy. The world needs copper, the world needs critical minerals, but the world doesn't really want to fund the exploration which is going to help us produce those minerals,” said junior miner Botswana Minerals MD James Campbell during a Seequent media event on June 25.

He highlighted that mineral discovery had become more difficult, noting that future discoveries would chiefly come from countries where there was high political risk.

Hence, explorers are tasked with extracting as much value as possible from each exploration dollar and derisking exploration to encourage investor confidence.

“Essentially, it's about not just simply deeper drilling, [but also] about better integration before drilling.”

With this in mind, Campbell reflected on the role of AI in mineral discovery.

In geoscience, he explained, AI could help to interrogate large heterogenous databases and identify patterns that would take “an army of geologists” to find after a considerable period.

Campbell said AI could thus help to reduce avoidable uncertainty in the industry and provide an auditable analysis of complex geological evidence.

He added that AI could also help improve the technical quality and corporate optionality of decision-making, stating that, while AI did not eliminate exploration risk, it did help to manage it better.

Additionally, Campbell also highlighted the value of legacy data, noting that, despite having an “exceptional” geological endowment, Africa remained largely underexplored.

“There is huge opportunity to go in to look at some of those very, very old archives of data and realise value from it,” he said, adding that AI could be used as a tool to help unlock this kind of value.

Despite its benefits, Campbell also warned that AI was not a “magic wand” but rather a tool that needed to be managed.

“AI is here not to replace the geologist . . . but this actually helps us do our work much quicker, much more efficiently, but with our eyes wide open in terms of the risk and uncertainty,” he said, emphasising that human judgment still provided necessary context, scepticism and accountability.

“You’ve got to use it responsibly,” he said.

Moving forward, Campbell said he expected AI-assisted prospectivity modelling to become the norm in the future, adding that there would also be more real-time integration of drilling and downhole sensing and agentic workflows.

“If we look at who will be the winners going forward, it will be those who can provide three things: best data discipline, geological judgment and execution capability, but with the ability to be able to fund that too,” he said.

“The future belongs to those explorers who can harness geological discipline, computational capability and, vitally, commercial constraint because, after all, juniors are the engine room of future mineral discovery and funding a junior is hard work,” he added.

Subsurface solutions company Seequent, a subsidiary of Bentley, hosted its Seequent Day on June 25, featuring industry speakers and customer case studies focused on improving subsurface understanding to support exploration and project outcomes.

Seequent serves customers throughout the private sector in mineral exploration and mining, including major, midtier and junior mining companies and geoscience consultancies.