Lost in the wild? AI could find you; Axios, August 10, 2025

• Ashley May, Axios ; Lost in the wild? AI could find you

"Hikers stranded in remote areas with no cell service or WiFi might have a new lifeline: AI.

The big picture: AI is helping some rescue teams find missing people faster by scanning satellite and drone images.

Zoom in: "AI's contribution is that it can dramatically reduce the time to process imagery and do it more accurately than humans," David Kovar, director of advocacy for NASAR and CEO of cybersecurity company URSA Inc., tells Axios.

Context: It's just one of many resources rescue teams use to help them, Kovar stresses.

AI already is eerily good at geolocating where photos are taken.

• Last month, the body of a hiker lost for nearly a year was found in Italy in a matter of hours after The National Alpine and Speleological Rescue Corps used AI to analyze a series of drone images.
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The intrigue: We also know when people are given the option to share their location as a safety measure, they do it.

What's next: AI agents could be trained to fly drones via an automated system. It's a theory Jan-Hendrik Ewers made the subject of his PhD at the University of Glasgow. 

• "You could have a fully automated system that monitors reports and triggers drone-based search efforts before a human has lifted a finger," Ewers tells Axios.
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• Barriers to implementing this kind of system are many: money, politics and the fact that when lives are at stake, relying on experimental AI could complicate efforts. 
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The other side: Some lost people don't want to be found. And, lost people can't consent.

• Nearly everyone will want this help, but "there will be cases where, for example, a person who is a victim of domestic violence says she's going out hiking, but she's not. She's not intending to come back," Greg Nojeim, senior counsel and director for Democracy & Technology's Security and Surveillance Project tells Axios.
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AI ethics depend on the circumstances, and who is using it, William Budington, senior staff technologist at nonprofit advocacy organization Electronic Frontier Foundation, tells Axios.

• If it's used to save lives and private data used in a rescue operation is wiped after a hiker is found, there is less of a concern, he says.
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• "But, using it to scan images or locate and surveil people, especially those that don't want to be found — either just for privacy reasons, or political dissidents, perhaps — that's a worrying possibility."

The Ethics of Thru-Hiking During the COVID-19 Pandemic; Outside, March 19, 2020

Grayson Haver Currin, Outside; The Ethics of Thru-Hiking During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Despite the coronavirus, you can legally thru-hike the Appalachian Trail right now. But should you?

"But what none of these organizations can do, of course, is legally or logistically close trails that run the length of the United States. That limitation and its implications have ripped the thru-hiking community into subdivisions, whose differing views are reflected on message boards and along the trails themselves. As sports leagues have canceled entire seasons and restaurants have laid off staff, the urgent question for thru-hiking in 2020 has become an ethical litmus test: Just because you can get on trail, should you? 

“People are going to do it, and that’s their choice,” says Scott Wilkinson, director of communications and marketing at the PCTA. “But hikers must take into consideration that our goal is to limit the spread of COVID-19, and the only certain way to do that is to physically limit the possibilities by social distancing. I can’t imagine a much better vehicle for a virus than a large group of hikers hitching to and out of hotels in small towns.”"