Exhuming my thesis, part V... with two sides of AI!

 Update 2: see a second side of AI here (although I did quit AI & socials, see my last post)

Update 1: another GIS also has an AI offering I tested below

This follows on Part IV with further AI investigation in GIS that created the maps in previous Parts. This is also an update on my Community Engagement series ending here. Our non-profit has an opportunity to re-engage GIS & AI after my partner attended an AGI meeting on same. I plan to repatriate to pursue this, stay tuned.

GIS:

We decided to pursue AI offerings on QGIS as it's free - my other account off maintenance curtails my access to AI tools - and the prognosis looks good. First I did a review of what's available in Google Gemini here. The update esp. the closing caveat were particularly useful.

click to enlarge

Here are the latest AI plugins on the latest version of QGIS.

click to enlarge

I loaded my last project I used in QGIS to review my thesis 40 years on, starting here & updated right here. The integrated chatbot question is at lower left, and the answer at middle right confirms that I have used the appropriate data set for regional geophysical data to study geologic terranes in that area.

As with AI topics in my blog feature post here - see this here posted ¼ way down - let me update you on GIS & AI as I keep exploring... Drop in comments below where you think I should use AI in GIS?

Update

giscloud.com proved useful to bird-dog my decades-old projects; I started using it 15 yrs. ago near their launch, because they were the first on-line vector-based GIS... now they prove their ingenuity again w AI baked-in, not a side-car as in QGIS!

click to enlarge

New world & old world

I happened to reread "Whence the Mountains" (Google Books), a memoir in honor of my thesis sup who launched me on this whole adventure: reference is made into a college essay I asked AI to find (Perplexity); not only did it find it, AI suggested how & where to source it... Lo and behold! University of Manitoba Archives sent me a copy barely over hour later... now that's what we call service!

Isn't it also a cool crossing of old & new, AI sourcing  from a college magazine the "words of the master from 72 years ago", per memoir editor?

click to enlarge, full, archives@umanitoba.ca

Read to the end below to get the crux of the issue. And if you read the last two poetic references, you get a hint of one of Ray Price's last piece on the geo-poetry inspired by his mentors SW Carey & WH Hamilton. His 2012 Penrose Gold Medal talk he concludes with a  "geo-poetic conceptual model". Warning: it's long and technical here; thanks co-alumna Tekla Harms for nominating him here.

click to enlarge, from above

Personal footnote: I experienced a similar adjustment in geologic context - although in using & not creating ideas - in my last undergraduate year at the University of Calgary, I attended a plate tectonics class with JF Dewey and K Burke. They inspired here my 4th yr. paper on aulacogens (Wikipedia). In my thesis area I realized the Southern Province was missing the symmetrical counterpart to the S - aulacogens like geosynclines were old concepts assuming symmetry, the absence of which led to drop the former and to see continental margins as extant halves of the latter - this led me to surmise a Manitoulin Island Discontinuity ending the original offshore extent in my thesis, review starts here.