That's a story that's been going on for literal centuries.

Myeah but is now about to continue on an industrial scale.

This is in response to people in the comments saying we should do lidar of the entire world and have AI find whatever it can.

Looters can also do their own lidar scans.

Probably not of the entire world, though.

For now they cannot do that, nor in the foreseeable future.

Why not? It isn't exactly a secret technology nor are LIDAR-equipped RC aircrafts/drones particularly out of reach in terms of cost either. What would stop them exactly?

With this you are searching for a needle in a haystack. There's a whole bunch of jungle to cover. With a drone you would spend ages not finding anything due to their limited range. That Would be pretty bad ROI.

Also, drone mounted LiDAR is often not powerful enough to go through dense foliage which you have in these tropical climates.

Ok, those are all reasons why it's hard, which it is for everyone by the way, not just "looters". It's still possible and doable, like it is for others. Your previous comment made it sound like it was impossible specifically for looters for some reason, which I'm glad we've cleared up wasn't your intention, thanks for explaining!

> nor are LIDAR-equipped RC aircrafts/drones particularl

Here in Romania it can be quite illegal to LIDAR map the local terrain without an official approval, and I'm not quite sure if that approval is ever given to individual persons/groups of persons that do not have any official status. So, no, I cannot just go out and LIDAR map my surroundings, even though the technology is available, I'd risk going to prison.

I would humbly suggest that perhaps the most consequential looters might be more like script kiddies than bond villains. Just vicinity and convenience

Using slop engines to loot ancient ruins is an apt metaphor for what slop engines have already done to humanity's written corpus.

For their next trick, perhaps billionaires can exhume our dearly departed and see whether they have any gold teeth or baubles worth scavenging.