Artificial Intelligence in Mining: Balancing Mineworkers’ Safety and Their Right to Privacy
Introduction
Artificial intelligence (AI) has made significant improvements and changed the way things are done in various sectors, including mining. In the mining sector, it has been used for various purposes, such as the development of autonomous drills, sorting and disposing of mineral waste and protection of workers from dangerous underground conditions through technological assessment of risks and sending of warnings. This blog focuses on the last purpose – protection of mineworkers through AI.
Undoubtedly, privacy concerns become relevant when AI is used for worker safety. As will be explained in this blog, for AI to be able to provide mineworkers with safety benefits, there has to be personal data collection. Once collected, this data must be processed, profiled, and safely stored to achieve the intended purpose of its collection. However, the issue with this process is its lack of adequate regulation globally. There is a lack of laws regulating AI specifically. As this blog argues, where data collection processes are not properly regulated, this poses significant threats to mineworkers where their personal information is not safeguarded from theft, misuse, and malicious actions.
This blog focuses on the African context and relies on South Africa as a case study. It offers an overview of the regulation of AI in Africa, discusses the privacy concerns, and lastly, provides recommendations.
How is Artificial Intelligence regulated in Africa?
Several mining companies in Africa are using AI in their operations. It is therefore important to ascertain how well AI has been regulated in the African continent thus far. The continent recognises the importance of regulating artificial intelligence, and the existence of the African Union Continental Artificial Intelligence Strategy is evidence of this. African countries have increasingly been using AI, but its regulation has not matured at the same pace. However, some countries of note in terms of AI policymaking in Africa are Mauritius, Kenya, and Egypt. Other countries like South Africa and Nigeria are in the stakeholder consultation stages and many others like Morocco are yet to visit AI regulation.
Although some African countries are involved in the creation of AI strategies and policies, there is a clear lack of designated legislation. This is significant given that strategies and policies, unlike legislation, are usually unenforceable.
In South Africa for example, there is a lack of designated AI legislation. The existing legislation does however deal with some aspects relevant to AI. This includes the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), the Patents Act, the Copyright Act, and the Competition Act. Nevertheless, there are no laws regulating AI specifically. Additionally, the country has not yet formalised any policy documents relating to AI.
There are several risks associated with this lack of AI regulation in Africa’s mining sectors, and this blog will focus on one of them, namely, the privacy risk.
The link between the use of AI for mineworkers’ safety and the protection of personal information
As mentioned above, for mineworkers to be able to benefit from increased safety through the use of AI, there is a need for data collection. As an illustration, there is what is known as “Life” wearable gear that uses sensors to collect brain activities of equipment drivers and track the fatigue of miners. This gear was developed by Experts Mining Solutions and it collects data such as the wearer’s brainwaves, lack of signal to the brain, as well as dietary or medical conditions. By so doing, the gear is said to be improving mineworker safety in that the chance of accidents is reduced by detecting fatigue with almost 95% accuracy and diagnosing illnesses for timeous treatment.
A further example is the BHP mining company’s use of SmartCaps in its Chilean copper mine. This technology analyses drivers’ brainwaves and alerts them as soon as it detects drowsiness.
Disclaimer: The above examples are only provided to illustrate the use of AI for mineworker safety. This blog does not make a link between these specific technologies and their users’ privacy.
In continuation, for mineworkers to benefit from such technologies, their data needs to be collected and processed to generate the required information about their mind activity and state of other conditions. The issue is in that, as shown above, AI is not well regulated in Africa. The information that AI systems collect ought to be regulated by enforceable AI-specific legislation, to ensure that while mineworkers benefit from increased safety, their personal information is also protected against theft, misuse and malicious actions.
What is the way forward?
It is essential for not only Africa, but the world at large, to prioritise the regulation of AI. In the European Union (EU) for example, an AI Act is expected to come into force in a few months and will find full application around June 2026.
In the meantime in Africa, mineworkers can be protected by existing privacy legislation. For instance, in South Africa, data protection can be achieved through the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA). However, due to the novelty and unique nature of AI as well as its unprecedented growth, specific AI legislation ought to be enacted not only in Africa, but across the world.