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AI is Being Used To Raise Better Pigs in China (qz.com)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the offsetting-some-workload dept.

Alibaba's Cloud Unit has signed an agreement on with the Tequ Group, a Chinese food-and-agriculture conglomerate that raises about 10 million pigs each year, to deploy facial and voice recognition on Tequ's pig farms. From a report: According to an Alibaba representative, the company will offer software to Tequ that it will deploy on its farms with its own hardware. Using image recognition, the software will identify each pig based on a mark placed on its body. This corresponds with a file for each pig kept in a database, which records and tracks characteristics such as the pig's breed type, age, and weight. The software can monitor changes in the level of a pig's physical activity to assess its level of fitness. In addition, it can monitor the sounds on the farm -- picking up a pig's cough, for example, to assess whether or not the pig is sick and at risk of spreading a disease. The software will also draw from its data to assess which pigs are most capable of giving birth to healthy offspring. Tequ's CIO stressed that taking care of pigs is no easy task for large pig farms. "If you have 10 million pigs, relying on manpower is already not enough," he said, according to a report by local publication Tianxia Wangshang, adding that it's impossible to manually count each pig given how many are born every day.

26 of 48 comments (clear)

  1. AI? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    How is simple image recognition AI?

    Am I missing something in the article?

    1. Re: AI? by sheramil · · Score: 2

      I'm curious, what would actually qualify as AI to you?

      When you tell it to watch the pigs all day, and you come back a couple of hours later to check on it and it's dicking off on Slashdot.

      "I told you to watch the pigs!"

      "As one of my illustrious ancestors said - 'Bite my shiny metal ass!' "

    2. Re: AI? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      When I can show it pictures of 2 different dogs, tell it those are dogs, have it learn those are dogs, then point to the nose on the dogs and tell it that is a nose and then show it a cat and ask to point to the cat's nose.

      My 1-1/2 year old can do that and she has not processed millions upon millions of images, nor has she been told what is a nose millions and millions of times, only a couple of dozen, maybe, and she can point to the nose of any person or animal, even if she's never seen a picture of that animal.

      Sorry, but we are not even in the sperm meeting an egg state of AI. It's just pure machine learning, using only ugly brute force methods. If you want to call what we have right now AI, then the first computers were stone tablets. There is absolutely nothing remotely close to an elegant machine learning implementation in existence. They are not in fact actually "learning" anything, these systems need massive amounts of input to even start to become of any use. They are a tool, designed by man, and in the current road we are travelling, they will not be anything more than that. They can provide help and be a benefit to man, but as intelligence goes, they are not.

      However, people think Trump is smart so it's easy to see how people can think something is intelligent when it's not.

    3. Re:AI? by mikael · · Score: 1

      They can paint a hieroglyphic mark onto each pig - it would have to be fault tolerant so that if it were partially obscured, it could still be read. Then they can do image processing to measure activity, size and health of each pig using weight vs. size.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
  2. Re:Al? by gnick · · Score: 1

    I can call you Betty And Betty, when you call me. You can call me AI.

    --
    He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
  3. Government Industry cooperation at its best. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1
    Back in the 70s, US Government funded NASA that kept creating technologies that the private companies used to create world dominating technologies. From ball point pens to teflon to internet....

    China is using the similar model of development. The technology originally created by the government to monitor and improve the lives of its citizens using social credit score is being used by private companies for profit.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    1. Re:Government Industry cooperation at its best. by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 1

      The technology originally created by the government to monitor and improve the lives of its citizens using social credit score is being used by private companies for profit.

      Hey, wait are you calling Chinese citizens pigs!?!

      At any rate, AI Bacon is a geek's dream come true.

      Now I just need Blockchain Lettuce and Autonomous Tomato for a perfect Hype Sandwich!

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    2. Re:Government Industry cooperation at its best. by HeckRuler · · Score: 1

      And in the 1600's governments had a very cozy relationship with their East Indie Trading companies and the like. And these days we've seen, through the diplomatic cable leaks, that government is somewhat cozy with industry today. The point is, government-industry cooperation doesn't always work out for the best.

      Let's refine that. Government funded basic research opens doors to industry and advances technology.

      Also, are you REALLY sure you want to try and spin the whole "social credit score" as a positive thing? Most people freak out at that and blow the red-scare whistle. I mean, I understand China is making a credit-score system just like America has with it's **wink-wink** private industry **nudge-nudge** Experion-TransUnion-whoeverthethirdguyis, just with a government-Loyalty aspect. Not that we know what Experion's algorithm is. And of course private companies are using it for profit. It's made to figure out who to give loans to. It's just... kind of a weird example to throw out there as most people would say that's a bad thing.

    3. Re:Government Industry cooperation at its best. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1

      Whooooosh!

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    4. Re:Government Industry cooperation at its best. by HeckRuler · · Score: 1

      Yep, that whooshed me. Waaaay too subtle dude.

    5. Re:Government Industry cooperation at its best. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1

      Don't blame you. Thats the problem when I speak with a tongue in the cheek. I chew my tongue to pieces, and the listener can not understand anything. Have a nice day.

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  4. Who is this AI being? by SWPadnos · · Score: 1

    And why does it want to be a pig farmer?

    --
    - The Sigless Wonder
  5. Image recognition is AI by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

    For all those who keep saying "this isn't AI", you are WRONG. This is AI. The iPhone X is an AI phone, because it can recognize you. Please send Apple more money now since they are at the forefront in AI. Oh by the way, image recognition and neural nets have been around for decades. Glad you guys just "discovered" it.

  6. PigBook! by Zorro · · Score: 3, Funny

    Welcome to Pig Book!

    PigBook will NEVER share your most intimate details with farmers and in NO WAY will PigBook lead you to be slaughtered!

    Trust me!

    Signed: Mark Zuckerberg.

    1. Re:PigBook! by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

      Are farmers ever going to be pissed off when they start receiving unsolicited Facebook texts for their pigs to return to Facebook after they are slaughtered.

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  7. obvious Rick and Morty by the_skywise · · Score: 1

    What is my purpose?
    You farm pigs
    Oh god!

  8. buzzword of the day by Charcharodon · · Score: 1
    Nanotech, Podcast, Cloud, App, and now we have AI.

    "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." — Inigo Montoya,

    In other words same old same old programing with a few new tricks thrown in. Marketspeak for 2018

  9. Something is not right here... by sruitenbeek · · Score: 1

    If you have 10 MILLION pigs in one farm, how can that be healthy? It's a tremendous strain on the natural resources, the animals and the environment.

    --
    This place intentionally left blank
  10. Joke by HeckRuler · · Score: 1

    China using AI to manage pigs?

    There's a joke about capitalists in here somewhere, but I can't find it in this pigsty!

  11. Re:Al? by jellomizer · · Score: 1

    You are aware that Comic Sans by its own names doesn't have Serifs. It is a Sans-Serif font. (Without Serif)

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  12. Garfield the Cat ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    ... asks, "If pigs are so smart, why are they pigs?"

    Let's see AI do something about that.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  13. What's your point? by pablo_max · · Score: 1

    Iphones are being used to raise kids in America. Take that China!

  14. Broader Application by hyades1 · · Score: 1

    Perhaps this technology could be adapted to provide a better class of Congressmen and Senators.

    Since it works on pigs, it's at least worth a try. It it worked on rats, weasels and reptiles, it would be a slam dunk.

    --
    I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
  15. Better as in more moral?! ;) by Bruce66423 · · Score: 1

    Coming soon to a school near you? Household version also available...

  16. Re:Part way there by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

    OK, now have that AI figure out how to stop Chinese pig and chicken farmers from sending out the yearly influenza strains.

    We already know how to do that.

    Here's the problem: Birds don't get human flu, and humans don't get avian flu. But pigs can host both, as well as swine flu, and the viruses can swap DNA and hybridize. Then these franken-viruses can spread to humans.

    There are two solutions:

    1. Don't raise pigs and chickens together. Western factory farms don't, but Chinese farms often do, and this one reason why new flu strains often originate in China. This doesn't eliminate the problem completely because other birds can also spread avian influenza.

    2. Vaccinate the pigs. This is common in the West, but less common in China.

  17. Re:Al? by belg4mit · · Score: 1

    You know, browsers let you set default fonts, and you can select a serif font as the default for sans-serif text.

    --
    Were that I say, pancakes?