Farmer kills 25 acres of crops after following AI weed and pest control advice

4 pointsposted 5 hours ago
by josephcsible

3 Comments

bell-cot

5 hours ago

While I get that lots of people love the anti-AI "moral" of this story - it's 25 acres of sesame seedlings. Less than 4% of one piddly square mile. This isn't even a sliver of a rounding error on how many crops are lost every single day, due to farmers making all sorts of "turned out badly" decisions.

CodingJeebus

4 hours ago

The scale of the fallout isn't the issue here. This guy has presumably been farming for years and, like so many people in other professions, just started turning his brain off and doing whatever the computer said.

This should be a wake-up call, but it probably won't be. If these mistakes start happening on an industrial scale, people will die.

bell-cot

an hour ago

> ...turning his brain off...This should be a wake-up call...

Yeah, but no. People substituting "AI" for actually thinking IS a huge problem with human nature. But trying to convince the average Tom's Hardware reader - let alone substantial decision makers - of that fact with an n=1, minimal stakes example from rural China? Try asking an experienced saleman if he would use such an example when he actually wanted to convinced his customer...vs. if his goal was to mock the supposed problem as meaningless.