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AI-Enhanced Weed-Killing Robots Frighten Pesticide Industry (reuters.com)
Rick Schumann writes:
A Swiss company called ecoRobotix is betting the agricultural industry will be willing to welcome their solar-powered weed-killing autonomous robot, in an effort to reduce the use of herbicides by up to a factor of 20 and perhaps even eliminate the need for herbicide-resistant GMO crops entirely.
The 'see-and-spray' robot goes from plant to plant, visually differentiating the actual crops and weeds, and squirting the weeds selectively and precisely with weed killer, as opposed to the current technique of using large quantities of weed killer like Monsantos' Roundup to spray entire crops.
Weeds are already becoming resistant to such glyphosate-based herbicides after "more than 20 years of near-ubiquitous use," reports Reuters. (The head of one pesticide company's science division concedes that "That was probably a once-in-a-lifetime product.") But AI-based precision spraying "could mean established herbicides whose effect has worn off on some weeds could be used successfully in more potent, targeted doses."
Meanwhile, another Silicon Valley startup has built a machine using on-board cameras to distinguish weeds from crops -- and was recently acquired by the John Deere tractor company. Reuters calls these companies the "new breed of AI weeders that investors say could disrupt the $100 billion pesticides and seeds industry."
The original submission asks: Should we welcome our weed-killing robotic overlords?
The 'see-and-spray' robot goes from plant to plant, visually differentiating the actual crops and weeds, and squirting the weeds selectively and precisely with weed killer, as opposed to the current technique of using large quantities of weed killer like Monsantos' Roundup to spray entire crops.
Weeds are already becoming resistant to such glyphosate-based herbicides after "more than 20 years of near-ubiquitous use," reports Reuters. (The head of one pesticide company's science division concedes that "That was probably a once-in-a-lifetime product.") But AI-based precision spraying "could mean established herbicides whose effect has worn off on some weeds could be used successfully in more potent, targeted doses."
Meanwhile, another Silicon Valley startup has built a machine using on-board cameras to distinguish weeds from crops -- and was recently acquired by the John Deere tractor company. Reuters calls these companies the "new breed of AI weeders that investors say could disrupt the $100 billion pesticides and seeds industry."
The original submission asks: Should we welcome our weed-killing robotic overlords?
Add a water tank, heat the water with the sun, spray them with hot water.
It's much easier mechanically.
I wonder when will weeds starts imitating the look of crops or maybe grew some patches/patterns that triggers the false positive of the image recognition algorithm and avoid being picked up by the robot... Sounds scary.
The article seems to suggest that the plan is to use current herbicides in greater concentrations to overcome resistance. But, surely the entire point of the current herbicides is that they fiendishly designed to be poisonous to weeds but not to crops. Once you have a gadget which only sprays the weeds, you can use a less specific chemical which just kills any plant it is sprayed on and which presumably the weeds haven't yet had a need to develop resistance to. It also seems to me that a weedkiller which kills any plant can attack much more fundamental aspects of plant biochemistry and therefore be harder to develop resistance to.
I already have weedkillers in my shed which basically say on the label "Kills all plants, only spray this on your weeds" and what they seem to be proposing is essentially the huge automated equivalent of me roaming my garden and carefully spraying any weeds I find.
Note that this invalidates most of the early court rulings in favor of Monsanto, which were made under Monsanto's assurance that plants could not develop resistance. And thus any crop which could survive spraying with Round-Up must be from stolen Monsanto seed. This shifted the burden of proof in Monsanto's favor. The farmer had to prove they were innocent and the seed got on their land accidentally, instead of Monsanto proving they were guilty because the farmer planted it deliberately.
Ah, but that's the whole benefit; if you use robots then that $3 bushel of corn which used to sell for $8 during the price spike can now be sold for $12 to gullible rubes because you can stick the word "Organic" on it.
Of course if everyone starts using robots instead of pesticides then the price difference drops and the farmers are no better off than they were when they started ... but, in the meantime, why not take advantage?
That's funny. What's worse is that the "organic" label in no way means "no pesticides". It means they used what they call "organic pesticides", which are pesticides that are chemically similar to some of nature's more potent toxins. What's not allowed on organic produce are the newer, more targeted pesticides which designed to be effective against insects but harmless to people. Instead, organic pesticides are based on the chemistry of toxic plants.
It's like using belladonna (deadly nightshade) to treat ulcers. It works if you happen to get a belladonna plant with just the right concentration of hyoscyamine, and you take just the right amount, but it's a hell of a lot safer and more effective to use modern compounds like amoxicillin or Prilosec.
In one recent USDA study, lettuce marketed as organic contained, on average, ten times the amount of pesticide as lettuce not marked organic. That's because "regular" lettuce can use trace amounts of modern, much more effective, compounds, rather than drowning the lettuce in a toxin that's naturally produced by a bacterium.