Advances in AI Earthquake Prediction

We attended some early neural net applications meeting where this was proposed, and added some of our own thoughts.   Nice to see this is evolving.   Are there shaking patterns in the earth that reliably predict earthquakes?    Thinking it is likely yes, but enough for the prediction and likely magnitude and location of major events?   I think yes too

AI Helps Seismologists Predict Earthquakes  in Wired
Machine learning is bringing seismologists closer to an elusive goal: forecasting quakes well before they strike. .... 

Artificial Intelligence Takes On Earthquake Prediction in QuantaMag

After successfully predicting laboratory earthquakes, a team of geophysicists has applied a machine learning algorithm to quakes in the Pacific Northwest.

In May of last year, after a 13-month slumber, the ground beneath Washington’s Puget Sound rumbled to life. The quake began more than 20 miles below the Olympic mountains and, over the course of a few weeks, drifted northwest, reaching Canada’s Vancouver Island. It then briefly reversed course, migrating back across the U.S. border before going silent again. All told, the monthlong earthquake likely released enough energy to register as a magnitude 6. By the time it was done, the southern tip of Vancouver Island had been thrust a centimeter or so closer to the Pacific Ocean.

Because the quake was so spread out in time and space, however, it’s likely that no one felt it. These kinds of phantom earthquakes, which occur deeper underground than conventional, fast earthquakes, are known as “slow slips.” They occur roughly once a year in the Pacific Northwest, along a stretch of fault where the Juan de Fuca plate is slowly wedging itself beneath the North American plate. More than a dozen slow slips have been detected by the region’s sprawling network of seismic stations since 2003.  And for the past year and a half, these events have been the focus of a new effort at earthquake prediction by the geophysicist Paul Johnson.    ..... "