Figures 5, 6, 7. Historical drilling vs. AI-guided drill plans for Targets 6, 16, and 65 respectively, showing the difference in hole orientation and spacing between the two approaches Zone 65 yielded the most geologically significant result. The prevailing site geological model had interpreted a fault in that area as a barrier to eastward mineralization continuity. The DL model’s grade prediction was inconsistent with this structural interpretation. Subsequent drilling confirmed high-grade Cu beyond the fault, prompting the geological team to reinterpret the structure as a shear zone—a revised interpretation that opens the region west of the main underground infrastructure for systematic follow-up evaluation. Importantly, the model’s contribution was the identification of a grade anomaly inconsistent with the structural model; the geological reinterpretation was the product of geological reasoning applied to the new drilling data. At Targets 6 and 16, the deficiencies of the historical drilling programs were geometric rather than related to absence of mineralization. At Target 16, historical drilling had intersected the zone margin but failed to follow up with geometrically appropriate hole orientations. Fan-pattern drilling and orientations perpendicular to mineralization resulted in high-grade intercepts being distributed across long composite intervals, effectively obscuring the grade signal. The DL model’s spatial representation framework preserves high-grade information in a manner structurally different from Kriging compositing, which is the mechanism by which these zones were recovered as drill targets. Table 3 – Drilling efficiency comparison, Chilean site Metric Site Baseline (2020– 2021) AI-Guided Program Cost per kT Cu verified Baseline 25% lower Total meters drilled Comparable 2,200 m Holes intersecting HG Variable 11 of 11 Cu added to Measured — 7.7 kT (~USD 64M in-situ)
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