What AI Will Be, And Won't Be, On The Farm

Artificial Intelligence is coming, and in many situations, its already here. So, how could, how will that change how farming takes place for the rest of the 21st century and beyond?

Dr. Trey Malone, Purdue University said he doesn’t see AI becoming the 2004 Will Smith “I, Robot” movie. Instead, he sees AI as a tool there to assist in the mundane.

“So you have a really good undergraduate intern in your pocket now and you never trust the final product of the undergraduate intern," Malone said. "What you do trust is the beginning stages of the project to the undergraduate intern and then you polish it from there. And so I think that's for anybody in ag and food right now, it's thinking about what would I have hired an intern to do before and how can I use this to make this a larger task.”

AI Can Serve As An Assistant

Malone noted AI is also a great tool for learning, decompressing really long text, such as the WASDE, or any other papers or documents with technical jargon. He added AI won't replace your agronomist anytime soon, but again, will provide another tool to get answers in a more timely fashion.

And while many in the farming community may thing AI is still years away from changing day-to-day production agriculture, Malone stressed the future is closer than you might think.

“College students today have always had AI in college," Malone said. "So, this is the first college senior class that had AI when they were freshmen. And so what does that mean? It means that for as much as it feels very new to us, it is pretty standard for them now. And so when we think about this new dynamic of using a new tool, make sure that you're using not just your own thinking but your whole team's thinking because they're going to have fundamentally different perspectives based on when they were in college, where they grew up, all of these things. And it's going to create a lot better strategy if you leverage that diversity of thought.”