John Deere's Self-Driving Tractor Stirs Debate on AI in Farming - Wired
( January 4, 2022; Wired )
Description: "The automation, and control of the resulting data, raises questions about the role of human farmers."
John Deere’s new 8R tractor uses six pairs of stereo cameras and advanced artificial intelligence to perceive its environment and navigate. It can find its way to a field on its own when given a route and coordinates, then plow the soil or sow seeds without instructions, avoiding obstacles as it goes. A farmer can give the machine new orders using a smartphone app.
Some tractors already operate autonomously but only in limited situations—following a route defined by GPS, for example, without the ability to navigate around obstacles. Others feature limited autonomy that still requires a farmer to sit behind the wheel.
Personally, I think that if we want a future of abundance and leisure for humans, technology is the only way to accomplish it, so my main questions pertain to safety, not labor disruption. It surprised me a few years ago when I learned that farming is one of America's most deadly occupations (another one is fishing). I can imagine that a tractor like this would make farming safer in some ways, but might create new dangers, too.
Deere hasn't announced the tractor's price, but existing models can cost as much as $800,000.
Here is the company's hour long video of the CES press conference (you can skip forward about 7 minutes):
And here is a 3 1/2 minute promo video for Deere's new 8R tractor:
The narrator in the promo video claims that the tractor can till a field just as well as a human, and - unlike humans - it can operate for 24 hours per day.
Read the rest from Wired: John Deere's Self-Driving Tractor Stirs Debate on AI in Farming
Check the #penny4thoughts tag to find other active conversations.
Many of the changes from the point of view of technological evolution, some people are still not perceiving it, or they have not realized the impact that this is going to cause. Industries are increasingly requesting automated models that produce benefits in terms of cost, time and productivity; If we add artificial intelligence to these teams that is capable of learning, processing a large amount of information in a short time and making predictions, the future of human labor is very sad, since today we are part of the change, but tomorrow In my opinion, I don't think we're going to be part of anything.
The technology is here to stay and is not pending in the event that workers are left without work at the time of the automation of the industry. Many say that technology does not destroy work but transforms it so that in this way human beings do not suffer the damage and danger that work entails, in this case agriculture.
I had seen this in a tutorial, I thought it was great, these people who sow the land need a lot of help and that more than technology, I think that in the future, the help received will be much more, I love this type of news
In this way, it will be possible to get less manpower and more efficiency. But the problem of unemployment will arise. What will people do if artificial intelligence and robots take care of everything?
Yeah, this is a concern. Until now, every new technology has brought new jobs with it, but there are no guarantees in the future. And new jobs don't really help the people who are displaced from the old jobs, so there will always be difficulty during transitional periods.
According to the videos, though, there's already a labor shortage in farming, so maybe the negative impact from the autonomous tractor will be somewhat small.
Self-driven tractor-how convenient!