Seismic Soundoff

“The major pitfall of machine learning of any kind is to be overly confident in the results. We run the risk of garbage in gospel out.” This discussion offers a rare chance to go a little deeper into a Leading Edge article and hear directly from the authors about the thinking behind their workflow. Satinder Chopra and Kurt Marfurt walk through how unsupervised machine learning, careful attribute selection, and simple preprocessing steps can reveal subtle channel features in a deepwater New Zealand example. It feels less like a theory lesson and more like practical guidance on using machine learning as a helpful partner in everyday seismic interpretation. KEY TAKEAWAYS > Small workflow choices have big impact. Clean input data, thoughtful attribute selection, and simple normalization steps often determine whether machine learning highlights geology or just amplifies noise. > The value is in the combination of tools and judgment. Unsupervised methods quickly expose patterns, but interpreters still need to com