Artificial intelligence is making its way into U.S. agriculture. Doug Johnson of Johnson Ag Outlook talks about how AI fits into production agriculture.
“What I’m talking about here is we have to be careful on what we expect out of it. Right now, if you go and do AI for just searching information, it’ll give you answers, but what I’m finding is the answers are not as accurate right now. It’s in the early learning stage, and my concern in our society is, are we diligently fact-checking the answers that we receive from this AI tool? Now, in agriculture, if you look at AI and the technology, there’s a whole new world out here that could enhance development.”
AI has the potential to do amazing things across different agricultural sectors.
“I talk about spot sprayers using lasers instead of chemicals. Talk about cell phone apps where you can go to the cattle sale and point your phone right at the cattle, and it’ll tell you the weight of the cattle. So, there are all kinds of new AI technology available. That’s not what I’m concerned about. I think that’s awesome. What I’m concerned about is as we go in and say, tell me about ‘x,’ and we use AI, and it gives us an answer. What I have found is AI is more inaccurate. It is more biased, rather than being accurate and unbiased.”
One of the concerning things is where AI gets its information from.
“In part, AI gets information from Facebook, you know, the ultimate news source, right, that everybody laughs about. So, AI is looking at what is the most populous opinion out there and says, well, that must be truth. I’ve got examples of AI. So, this lab-raised meat movement. I went into AI, and I typed in, ‘Is lab-raised meat better than farm-raised meat?’ And it said yes. And then it gave me reasons why lab-raised meat is better. We both know lab-raised meat is failing in its development. It is not better for the environment. It’s not cost effective and uses more water, the whole story. But AI said, yes, it’s better. What if you were not in an ag area?”