From Building Minebots to Digging for Dirty Money  Jamie King's
attempt to build mining robots turned into software that helps
banks find money launderers in a sea of financial data  In 2003,
Jamie King was trying to develop machines that could replace
humans in dangerous nickel and iron-ore mines. Then a robotics
PhD student at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada, he
used artificial intelligence to interpret the vast data
streaming from the robots' sensors, which measured the distance
of objects in every direction a thousand times a second.
Although mining companies passed on the idea, King later
discovered an unlikely new use for his minebot software:
catching money launderers.  Banks collect huge data sets on the
millions of transactions that move money in and out of their
accounts. When university colleagues introduced King to a
financial-software entrepreneur, he got a peek at such a pile of
numbers and realized it looked "very much like a whole bunch of
sensor readings." King co-founded Verafin