Comment – From AI to where?
As it’s August, the editor has decided to park the pen and handover to a guest (and in this case, well informed, yet anonymous) contributor who is active on the agricultural machinery stage.
Here goes:
So, AI investment is moving from a speculative position to “deliverables” – a fundamental change in a very short period of time. AI is now mainstream and impacts our lives on a daily basis; from transactions analysis for fraud to predicting the weather and traffic. This rapid mainstream uptake of AI has compacted the sector, isolating certain players who have either haven’t matured or upscaled commercially within months, not decades. Driven by the major technology players such as Microsoft investing heavily in the market through growth, acquisitions and dominance.
Consider the the key players; NVIDIA (hardware), Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Arm Holding (hardware), IBM and to a degree Meta – These are now the powerhouses in AI and tech, swallowing up smaller tech startups or simply sidelining. Key investment houses have been quick to react, shifting investment and to a degree driving shareholder clout within some of these companies – to the detriment of others.
What is the impact on farming – Whilst its been aired that tech & AI will deliver a “farming and food revolution” the simple fact its much more subtle than that! Frankly farming is often towards the end of technological deployments, this controversially is probably no different for AI; its easier (and more profitable) for Google to implement AI within web searchs or ChatGPT to create cartoons, logo’s or a LinkedIn article, or sell processing space then convince Sam the farmer that his 1500 acres of wheat needs “AI’ing”, and we know AI can’t change the weather (yet :)).
So why subtle; Lets consider all the Ag universities, seed manufacturers, machinery manufacturer or even supermarket logistics – AI is now available at their hands simply using existing tech platforms, allowing streamlining of processes, ideas and even people. From spotting anomalies in seed genes, predicting the failure point of part to the timing estimations for “field to fork” of asparagus. With AI now firmly rooted in everyday business tasks we may try to look for “big picture, big impact” but opposed to where it’s actually much more subtle and to a degree unseen!
At this point the big may just get bigger when it comes to AI – those hold the processing power, hold the key.
Have a good week.
