(NAFB) Artificial Intelligence is coming to agriculture, and in many situations, it’s already here. How will that change how farming takes place for the rest of the 21st century and beyond?
Dr. Trey Malone, an associate professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University, says 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. 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 I would have hired an intern to do before and how can I use this to make this a larger task?”
Malone noted AI is also a great tool for learning, decompressing really long text, such as the WASDE Report, or any other papers or documents with technical jargon. He added that AI won’t replace your agronomist anytime soon, but again, it will provide another tool to get answers in a more timely fashion.
And while many in the farming community may think AI is still years away from changing day-to-day production agriculture, Malone stressed the future is nearer than you might think.
“College students today have always had AI in college. 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.”
Malone added that AI can also help farmers and growers with good strategic planning.
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Audio provided by Glenn Vaagen, PNW Ag Network, Pasco, Washington
Audio with Dr. Trey Malone, an associate professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana
