James Howells, who accidentally threw away a hard drive with cryptocurrency, presented a garbage sorting project using artificial intelligence to detect a lost device. The project budget is $11 million.
In 2013, Howells accidentally threw away this disc, confusing it with another, exactly the same device.
Howells hopes that the local authorities will allow him to organize a search for lost bitcoins. For almost a decade, the Newport City Council rejected his requests to dig up the hard drive, saying it was expensive and harmful to the environment.
The Howells project, worth $11 million, provides for the cleaning of more than 100 thousand tons of garbage over three years. The abridged version of the project will cost $6 million and will take a year and a half. The search for a hard drive is supposed to be conducted with the help of sorters, robot dogs from Boston Dynamics, and a Max-AI scanner with artificial intelligence trained to search for hard drives on a conveyor belt.
Howells's plans also include recycling and reburial of sorted garbage. After the project is completed, he plans to build a solar or wind power plant on top of the landfill.
Howells said that if he manages to find the hard drive and recover the data, he will keep about 30% of what is there. About a third will go to reward the team, 30% to investors, and the rest will be spent on local needs, including the payment of 50 pounds in bitcoins to each of the 150 thousand residents of Newport.
If Howells fails to enlist the support of the city council, the last resort in finding a loss will be to file a lawsuit claiming that the actions of the authorities constitute an "illegal embargo" on the hard drive, the report says.
