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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?
Seems like it wouldn't take much more mechanical engineering know how to pull them out by the roots. I have yet to hear of a weed that can resist being pulled out of the ground and tossed into the compost bin.
Some weeds break at the soil line and the roots regrow, you say? It's a robot, run it again in a month or two. Extra added bonus, this time you get all those young whippersnapper weeds that were but tis a seed last time the robot came by.
This is an awesome job for AI robots. Either:
1. It replaces hard-on-the-body manual labor (long hours bent over, sun & sunburn & skin cancer, etc) by using a robot to pull weeds.
2. It delivers targeted doses of herbicides, hopefully reducing the enormous amount of Glyphosate(*) currently used AND reducing Monstanto's ridiculous amount of control over the farm industry.
* - Over 90% of all glyphosate produced and used EVER has been in the past 20 years. 70% in just the last 10. Food today is NOT the same as it was in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s. Do you trust Monsanto to proactively limit the amount of Roundup you consume?
https://www.ecowatch.com/monsa...
The point is the robots are smart enough to differentiate between the plants you want growing there and the plants you don't. Goats, on the other hand, like a lot of variety in their diet, although amazingly they can take out Himalayan Blackberry plants that weed wackers won't even dent.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
have a headline like "see the new gadget that terrifies the pesticide industry", mention magnets maybe and the investment opportunity. click bait on slashdot
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Again, the point of the robots is that they are selective in what they kill.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Just apply very concentrated doses of fertilizer and other "good" soil chemicals - enough to poison the weeds when applied directly, but good for the crop when diluted by irrigation or rain.
Insects that like to eat plants often like to eat the same plants we do. They do not prefer weeds. Asking them nicely to stay off our crops is ineffective. Beneficial insects and birds may reduce pests but won't affect weeds.
weed killer != pesticide. Weed killer is designed to kill plants with a preference hopefully for weeds. Pesticide is designed to kill bugs. The dominant weed killers in the city are concrete and asphalt.
At one point we had the delusion that weed killers don't have an effect on humans. We've since found that our bodies do often have responses. For example, those based on plant estrogens have caused early puberty in some females - as early as toddler ages in cases where they got really stupid and put plant estrogens in a shampoo.
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.
can we train it to weed out politicians ?
Robotics can make sense in agriculture, but as every farmer will tell you, farming is really about economics: Getting good returns of investment on a weeding robot, given how relatively cheap pesticides are, is going to be tricky given regular year's crop prices.
The last time we had a boom in agricultural tech had nothing to do with the tech getting better, and a lot with a terrible drought in the midwest that made prices skyrocket. When corn pays $8 per bushel, instead of $3, suddenly everyone was willing to buy tech. Then prices drop again, nobody wants to keep buying, and many people that bought into the tech when they expected $8 forever just went bankrupt.
Eventually we'll have cheap enough robots that will also handle pests, and might even isolate or destroy diseased plants, lowering our chemical uses while still having great yields, but in agriculture, it's the economics that is stopping a tech boom, as aiming for the top of the technology chain, including the best seeds, is quite the gamble given what weather can do to your operation.
Again, the point of the robots is that they are selective in what they kill.
So are T-800 and T-1000.
Humans are their weeds.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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.
Well...are you recommending spreading custom tailored diseases or what? I'm not sure we really want to push technology ahead in that direction.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
That's not strictly true. Many insects have quite specific desires for a host plant. But how do you get rid of the ones that prefer your crop without getting rid of the others?
Back in the day people growing cherries used to kill birds because they would eat the cherries, even though the birds also ate enough of the insects that also ate the cherries that this was a bad move. But they could *see* the birds eating the cherries.
Ecologic systems are complex, and not constructed primarily to benefit humans. Feedback loops don't get any more complicated.
I really don't like the idea of using even targeted weed-killer, because *something* has had really disastrous effects on the nation's ecology with changes easily visible during my lifetime, but targeted is probably better than widespread. And as suggested above the same robots, only slightly improved and modified, could deliver live steam or microwaves in a targeted manner...but that's probably better saved for a later improved model.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Goats are useful for clearing underbrush out of a woods. Geese are useful for clearing weeds out of cotton. But those are both special cases.
And goats will eat the seedling trees, so you've got to be careful there. If you know your Bible, you'll remember the famous cedars of Lebanon. They aren't there anymore, because the next generation was eaten by goats.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This is the kind of research that should be subsidized because of the potential health benefits of reducing herbicides in our food.
Market forces alone will not entirely "care" because they are weighing costs and profits, not long term consumer health.
True, it may make things easier for organic farmers, but if weed bots get cheap enough for regular crops, then either they are cheaper than herbicides, or herbicides can be banned because weed-pulling robots would a sufficient alternative.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
You cannot control that. "Nature" is inefficient, slow and fails often. That is not compatible with industrial food production. And, lets not sugarcoat it, unless we do industrial food production, a lot of people are going to starve.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
AI-Enhanced Headline Writing Robots Frighten Tech-Blog Editors
A Swiss company called headRobotix is betting the tech-blog industry will be willing to welcome their solar-powered headline-writing autonomous robot, in an effort to reduce the use of lame editors by up to a factor of 20 and perhaps even eliminate the need for clickbait-enhanced headlines entirely.
The 'see-and-write' robot goes from story to story, visually differentiating the actual information and FUD, and writing the headlines selectively and precisely with clickbait killing AI, as opposed to the current technique of using large quantities of snot nosed nitwits to clickbait entire stories.
and instead of pulling the weed it just burns them to the dirt, it might be quicker and the dead weed can just sit there and decompose back in to the soil
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
This disruption couldn't happen to a mode deserving bunch than the likes of Monsanto. The real agri-revolution will happen when everything from in the agricultural production cycle (plow/seed/weed/pick/sort/transport/etc..) is automated. In that world, what will farmers be transformed into?
Organization? You must be joking..
I already have weeder robots on our farm. They eliminate the need to use herbicides and pesticides because not only do they pull the weeds but they also kill rodents and insects that are problems for our crops. I have the versions called D.U.C.K.S. and C.H.I.C.K.E.N.S, - They work great.
Seriously. Properly timed rotations of ducks and chickens through corn, brassicas, tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins, sunflowers and other crops do wonders to remove the weeds prior to planting and after the crops have grown to about 12" to 18" in height.
Prior to all of this we use the biorobotic tilling machines called P.I.G.S..
As an added benefit all of these robots excrete organic fertilizers that are specially formulated to make our crops thrive. It's called S.H.I.T.
Finally, at the end of the biorobot's service life rather than repairing them we disassemble them and pack up the drive components to sell as high quality organic meat. What a win-win situation for farmers, consumers and the environment! Of course, pesticide producers are rather P.I.S.S.E.D. but that can be used for fertilizer too as it is high in beneficial nitrogen need by crops.
Soon cities will profit selling off the right to rip open landfills with robots and recycle it all.
You read it here first!
Actually, if you had been paying attention you read it here 15 years ago here first. I usually got downmodded saying it was silly to worry about landfills.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Sure they'll come back up, but if there's a pass of this machine every 3 days, it'll eventually kill it.
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
The pesticide industry will do just fine even with weed killing robots being deployed. There are plenty of other chemicals to make and plenty of other facets of agribusiness they can profit from. Even if sales of roundup permanently went to zero this afternoon the company that makes it would be just fine.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
How long will it take the weeds to evolve to look like the crops?
*** On the Internet, no one knows you're using a VIC-20
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.
Yeah, toxic to bugs. Did you know that mint oil is a neurotoxin to wasps? You're ignoring half of the argument in order to demonize organics.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And, lets not sugarcoat it, unless we do industrial food production, a lot of people are going to starve.
Backwards. If we keep doing industrial food production, a lot of people are going to starve. The absolute highest yields are seen with guilds of plants produced using organic fertilizers and zero-tilth soil management methods where weeds are simply cut down and left in place to provide soil cover, before they produce seeds so as not to simply spread them. Industrial farming using synthetic fertilizers and pesticides destroys soil diversity, turning topsoil into an inert hydroponic growing medium — and the use of heavy machinery to till soil both destroys the complex crumb structure of the soil that permits it to hold water, and also creates hardpan. Hardpan prevents drainage and leads to anaerobic soil conditions which cause a broad variety of maladies, not least that glyphosphate persists in such conditions instead of breaking down like Monsanto claims it does. That's why there's now glyphosphate in everything; there is essentially no such thing as pure organic farming, because the entire world is polluted.
TL;DR: Factory farming is actually harmful to both short-term and long-term food production, and is the least efficient means possible if you consider all of the costs.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yeah, toxic to bugs. Did you know that mint oil is a neurotoxin to wasps? You're ignoring half of the argument in order to demonize organics.
No, he's not. Some stuff - like mint oil - is mostly just toxic to bugs. Other approved "organic" pesticides - like copper sulphate - are toxic to pretty much every type of animal life. Some approved pesticides, like pyrethrin, are known neurotoxins. While pyrethrin tends to break down relatively quickly some residue still remains on produce, and it certainly poses a far greater risk to farmers themselves than roundup ever could.
No, he's not. Some stuff - like mint oil - is mostly just toxic to bugs. Other approved "organic" pesticides - like copper sulphate - are toxic to pretty much every type of animal life.
Yes, he is, because he's conflating them all. Which ones are used in which percentages, and which ones are easiest to wash off are both relevant.
When I've done organic gardening, I've used literally nothing which was harmful to humans. Castile soap, neem oil, and baking soda cover the majority of problems. Sometimes I had to bring in some insect predators, but they turned out fine. Not using pesticides which harm beneficial insects means that there are insect predators, and also more birds around to eat bugs. And yields are higher when you don't plant monocultures, and you don't till soil. Finally, most big ag companies require that farmland not be surrounded by wilderness for fear that a deer might shit on some lettuce. Of course, we know that the real problem is when people shit in the fields because they don't have time for a bathroom break, which is what happens on factory farms. It's perfectly safe to use humanure once it's been composted; in a year or less, it becomes perfectly benign soil that is not only safe, but also utterly unrecognizable as feces.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Genetically selected rabbits that just eat the weeds and not the crops?
J
>Did you know that mint oil is a neurotoxin to wasps?
That would be interesting, and relevant if wasps were a pest to important crops, and therefore mint oil could be used to protect the crops from wasps. As you may know, that's not the case.
Well, I suppose it's indirectly relevant if you consider that wasps primarily feed in insects, some of which are crop pests. Therefore using the organic mint oil kills the wasps, which then can't kill the pest insects. In that way, organic mint oil increases the number of pest insects. That doesn't support your narrative, though, so we'll ignore the actual effect and just say it's not relevant.
> When I've done organic gardening ...
When I build electronic circuits, I sometimes use wire wrapped. You'll never find wire-wrapped circuits in any store, so the fact that I use it is completely irrelevant to any discussion about which electronics people buy. When I build model planes at home, I use Dollar Tree foam board, gift cards, and popsicle sticks. You won't find any stores selling planes made of DT foam board, gift cards, and popsicle sticks, so that construction method is irrelevant to what people choose to purchase in stores.
Your garden isn't in the grocery store, so it's completely irrelevant to the discussion of what consumers buy. Commercially produced organic produce uses significantly more toxic chemicals than that not marked organic.
Anything you say about your home garden or wasps is just trying to distract from that simple fact.
Now do the same thing for fire fighting. Have a solar robot stationed and patrolling a given area. When a fire ignition is detected, it sprays water to extinguish the flame at the source.
These robots are being developed because farming has made plants resistant to pesticides. What are we going to do when plants start evolving to be resistant to robots?