How can farmers keep up with artificial intelligence?

Initial excitement was quickly calmed as AI’s flaws emerged. The most high-profile unveiling of this flaw came with Google Bard. In an advertisement to show off the new technology, the bot was asked about discoveries made by the James Webb Space Telescope. Bard’s answer: the telescope was the first to take pictures of a planet outside the Earth's solar system. Incorrect. That feat was achieved by the European Very Large Telescope in 2004, before the James Webb Space Telescope was even launched. At the time the mistake had a major impact on the value of Alphabet, Google's parent company.

But to dismiss AI for its early, costly errors would be a mistake. It is already making inroads into the agricultural sector, enhancing the precision application of pesticides, improving the accuracy of yield forecasts and improving the monitoring of livestock health and wellbeing. The recently launched Farming Equipment and Technology Fund provides an opportunity for farmers and land managers to start taking advantage of advancing technologies in order to drive efficiencies in their business.

Move 37

Go is a strategy board game invented in China more than 2,500 years ago, where the aim is to capture more territory than the opponent. An estimated 46 million people play across the world. Lee Sedol is one of the greatest ever players, winning 18 international titles. When challenged by AlphaGo, an AI programme able to play Go, he felt confident of a whitewash victory. 

He lost the first game. Surprising, but it was the second game that stunned the world, specifically move 37. The machine made a move no human ever would have made. While commentators thought it a foolish move, Lee Sedol understood its genius. He went on to lose that game and four of the five matches played against AlphaGo.

The end of the beginning

A floating point operation generally includes processes such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. Floating Point Operations Per Second (FLOPS) is a metric that quantifies the number of these calculations performed per second, thereby indicating the computational capacity and efficiency of AI systems. 

AlphaGo was one of the first to exceed the 10²³ FLOPS threshold around 2017. Yet AlphaGo is now comparatively basic. According to Epoch AI, 11 models exceeded 10²³ FLOPS in 2020. By 2024, this grew to 81 models. Plainly, AI is advancing at a tremendous speed.

It is not inconceivable that AI reaches the “point of singularity” within a decade; that is the point at which AI achieves greater-than-human intelligence. There are numerous other factors to consider, namely regulation and policy, but the speed of advancement and power of AI is evident.

Meet the challenge

So, how do farmers keep up with something that is improving so rapidly, something that could be more intelligent than humans? The answer is not to ignore it. AI already consumes as much energy as entire nations; that’s expensive. The expense is being endured because there is a belief that AI will generate more value than it costs. To ignore AI would be to lose out on that value, especially when it is already advancing agriculture:

• Dogtooth Technologies is a Cambridge-based technology start-up that is using AI to enable robots to pick soft fruit.
• The SKAi spot spraying system uses AI to target individual weeds for spot spraying, reducing chemical use by up to 95% compared to blanket application.
• Loughborough University created tools that can analyse farming data to estimate methane emissions from livestock, ammonia emissions from dairy farms and predict milk productivity.

Instead, farmers should look to actively engage with AI. First, investigate AI. Learn the difference between a neural network and a large language model. Then, use AI. Play with generative AI programmes like Copilot, Gemini or ChatGPT and become familiar with their flaws and features. Finally, stay informed. Learn how AI is changing throughout the world and specifically within the agricultural sector.

A new relationship with technology

AI is going to change our relationship with technology. Agriculture has to accept that AI may do things that farmers do not understand, just as it did against Lee Sedol. This does not mean there is no space for the human. The human is needed to exercise caution, to check AI’s answers to make sure mistakes like the one made by Bard are not repeated. 

The human is also needed to exercise creativity. Just as AlphaGo made a move no human ever would, Lee Sedol made a move no machine ever anticipated, a move described by observers as a “masterpiece” and “divine”. The divine move led to AlphaGo eventually capitulating. It gave Lee Sedol a victory.

Further information

Contact Joe Lloyd 

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