A poison can serve as a nectar depending on how you use it! Those fearing the onset of Artificial Intelligence (AI) might not be aware of benefits that AI presents for the mankind and environment. AI is just a technology, it works on how you design it and what you feed i.e. what you input into the machine.
In order to understand the vital and complex ecosystems, a team of programmers, foresters and biometricians came together to form SilviaTerra. The organisation seeks to apply AI and Machine Learning (ML) in four key environmental areas: agriculture, water, biodiversity and climate change.
Human has already done much damage to the environment in past, what we do today is going to affect the future. SilviaTerra and Microsoft AI work hand in hand to build the forests of future, sustainably managed working forests.
Listen to the podcast with Lucas Joppa, Chief Environmental Officer at Microsoft and Zack, Co-founder and president of SilviaTerra HERE
AI has also been shaping the farming techniques as agriculture businesses have a plethora of trackable assets (livestock, machinery and plants). Also, by analysing data from disparate sources such as temperature, soil analysis, weather, moisture and historic crop performance, AI enabled systems can effectively predict which crops to plant, the optimal date for sowing and harvesting in a specific area, thus improving the crop yields.
The predictive analytics of AI can raise alarm if it sees the increased risk for pest attacks, allowing strategic application of pesticides and thus reducing their overall requirements.
An autonomous robot have been developed by Jon Deere which distinguishes crop from weeds utilising the deep learning computer vision model. This robot administers the exact quantity of weed killer required, thus dramatically reduces the chemicals used for the protection of crops.
Through sensors, drones, data analytics, AI and connectivity solutions, Microsoft is enabling precision agriculture to improve yield while reducing resource consumption.
As the world’s population is projected to touch 10 billion by 2050, it becomes essential to increase the crop productivity and decrease the water abuse.
The applications of AI promise higher productivity of crops, reduced use of pesticides, fertilizers and water. This keeps the food prices down, produces higher quality food and ensures that the food production keep abreast with the population needs. In this era of Quantum Computing, there much more to be realized of AI and cognitive technologies.
SOURCES:
Kirkpatrick, K. (2019). Technologizing Agriculture. [online] Cacm.acm.org. Available at: https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2019/2/234343-technologizing-agriculture/fulltext [Accessed 7 Mar. 2019].
Mello, U. (2019). Smarter Farms: Watson Decision Platform for Agriculture. [online] IBM Research Blog. Available at: https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2018/09/smarter-farms-agriculture/ [Accessed 7 Mar. 2019].
Microsoft.com. (2019). Microsoft AI for Earth. [online] Available at: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/ai-for-earth?activetab=pivot1%3aprimaryr6 [Accessed 7 Mar. 2019].
Roven, A. (2019). AI in Agriculture. [online] Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/neuromation-blog/ai-in-agriculture-49c0ea0e2b48 [Accessed 7 Mar. 2019].
Silviaterra.com. (2019). About Us | SilviaTerra. [online] Available at: https://silviaterra.com/bark/about.html [Accessed 7 Mar. 2019].
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