Farm robots helping put healthier produce on the table
December 5, 2023 2:55 PM Subscribe
Farm robots helping put healthier produce on the table by reducing herbicide use.
Hand-weeding and mechanical cultivation fell out of favour following the invention of herbicides in the 1940s. But robots imported to Australia from manufacturers in countries such as Denmark and the United States are reviving these weed-control methods to slash chemical use.
Guided by GPS and cameras, the machines use knives and wires to take out pest plants by hand instead of spraying.
The Danish machine is a solar-powered driverless robot that weeds and seeds using GPS, while the American set-up attaches to a tractor, weeding using cameras and artificial intelligence.
Powered by two batteries that are charged by four solar panels, FarmDroid claims the bot can run 24 hours a day in sunny conditions and can cover about 900 metres an hour, or 6 hectares a day.
While these are built to work in horticulture crops, there are similar robots operating in grain and cotton-growing regions.
The Danish machine is a solar-powered driverless robot that weeds and seeds using GPS, while the American set-up attaches to a tractor, weeding using cameras and artificial intelligence.
Powered by two batteries that are charged by four solar panels, FarmDroid claims the bot can run 24 hours a day in sunny conditions and can cover about 900 metres an hour, or 6 hectares a day.
While these are built to work in horticulture crops, there are similar robots operating in grain and cotton-growing regions.
OH GOD WHAT HORRORS HAVE WE WROUGHT???
especially given that the "hands" will have 19 fingers
posted by Dr. Twist at 3:19 PM on December 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
especially given that the "hands" will have 19 fingers
posted by Dr. Twist at 3:19 PM on December 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's like someone watched the end of Caligula and thought "hmmm, but what if weeds instead of heads..."
posted by grumpybear69 at 3:19 PM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by grumpybear69 at 3:19 PM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
we catch these glimpses of the kind of future we might create if we just stop exploiting and killing one another long enough to make it happen
posted by elkevelvet at 3:31 PM on December 5, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by elkevelvet at 3:31 PM on December 5, 2023 [8 favorites]
Silliness aside, I think the computer-vision based "hand" weeders (whether they use mechanical removal, lasers, or whatever) are a really exciting development. This, not art, is what robots should be doing. Drudgery! No more humans bent over in the hot sun hoeing, no more spraying the whole arable world with carcinogens. Robots in the fields, humans in the shade, writing poetry.
Come at me, Roko's Basilisk.
posted by agentofselection at 3:32 PM on December 5, 2023 [73 favorites]
Come at me, Roko's Basilisk.
posted by agentofselection at 3:32 PM on December 5, 2023 [73 favorites]
That's great. I wish there was a video of tye actual pulling/removing process. I'm.really curious how that works. Also I was thinking it would be great if instead of AI these were operated by formerly migrant workers, sitting in comfortable rooms at comfortable temperatures with at home or within a short commute of home.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 4:08 PM on December 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 4:08 PM on December 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
Sharks with frickin' lasers -- er I mean weeding robots with lasers! Carbon Robotics makes an autonomous weeder robot that uses lasers to zap weeds. "Now with AI!" Bring on the laser wielding AI robot masters.
(Disclaimer: the founder is a friend.)
posted by phliar at 4:24 PM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
(Disclaimer: the founder is a friend.)
posted by phliar at 4:24 PM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
Also I was thinking it would be great if instead of AI these were operated by formerly migrant workers
Well, if by "operated by" you mean owned by and sent out to farms to do labor, I'd agree, but if you are suggesting that having humans sitting at some remote controls doing menial labor that ties up their mental and physical time, even if it isn't out under the hot sun, is somehow better than autonomous labor you can ignore once deployed, I'm not entirely sure what you are smoking. But I do encourage you do delete your dealer's number.
posted by hippybear at 4:24 PM on December 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
Well, if by "operated by" you mean owned by and sent out to farms to do labor, I'd agree, but if you are suggesting that having humans sitting at some remote controls doing menial labor that ties up their mental and physical time, even if it isn't out under the hot sun, is somehow better than autonomous labor you can ignore once deployed, I'm not entirely sure what you are smoking. But I do encourage you do delete your dealer's number.
posted by hippybear at 4:24 PM on December 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
Meanwhile this robot is being used to keep birds away from a blueberry field. GO ROBOTS.
posted by JoeZydeco at 4:39 PM on December 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by JoeZydeco at 4:39 PM on December 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
I want a laser bug zapper. Something that tracks mosquitos and then gently cooks them with a millisecond infrared pulse. Just hot enough so they die and fall down to be eaten by something or turn into dirt.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:40 PM on December 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:40 PM on December 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
The laser pulse isn't too difficult but the tracking on tiny objects like that which aren't confused with other air detritus seems to be more difficult.
Basically all the human senses are really difficult for computers... we've gotten hearing down pretty good, but sight? that's lagging behind. And let's not even get into taste.
posted by hippybear at 4:47 PM on December 5, 2023
Basically all the human senses are really difficult for computers... we've gotten hearing down pretty good, but sight? that's lagging behind. And let's not even get into taste.
posted by hippybear at 4:47 PM on December 5, 2023
Already posted this in one of the other threads, but NVIDIA's Eureka: LLM-authored reward functions outperform those written by human experts 83% of the time by an average of 52%. Including tasks involving complex kinematics and fine motor skills (ie pen-spinning with a simulated hand).
Migrant workers from the global south ought - in a world with any justice - to be the first to see the rewards of eliminating work that is unambiguously toil. We don't live in that world, and I strongly suspect the bridge between here and there will need to be built from the bones of a million sociopathic capitalists.
posted by Ryvar at 5:00 PM on December 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
Migrant workers from the global south ought - in a world with any justice - to be the first to see the rewards of eliminating work that is unambiguously toil. We don't live in that world, and I strongly suspect the bridge between here and there will need to be built from the bones of a million sociopathic capitalists.
posted by Ryvar at 5:00 PM on December 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
Excuse me, did you say "knives"?
posted by The Tensor at 5:05 PM on December 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by The Tensor at 5:05 PM on December 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
The laser pulse isn't too difficult but the tracking on tiny objects like that which aren't confused with other air detritus seems to be more difficult.
The tech for that already exists
posted by Dr. Twist at 5:06 PM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
The tech for that already exists
posted by Dr. Twist at 5:06 PM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
Well, if by "operated by" you mean owned by and sent out to farms to do labor, I'd agree, but if you are suggesting that having humans sitting at some remote controls doing menial labor that ties up their mental and physical time, even if it isn't out under the hot sun, is somehow better than autonomous labor you can ignore once deployed, I'm not entirely sure what you are smoking. But I do encourage you do delete your dealer's number.
I guess I was thinking of employed and working at remote controls, but you're right that owned is even better. My main thinking was that people would rather be employed than unemployed, rather be employed close to home than migrating around in terrible conditions, and rather be working at a nice ergonomic desk then bent over in a field in the sun. So I guess I was mainly thinking "hey this could do the planting and the harvesting and the bug-picking too and all the migrant workers could still make a living but do it in a way that is more pleasant and conducive to a happy life."
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:29 PM on December 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
I guess I was thinking of employed and working at remote controls, but you're right that owned is even better. My main thinking was that people would rather be employed than unemployed, rather be employed close to home than migrating around in terrible conditions, and rather be working at a nice ergonomic desk then bent over in a field in the sun. So I guess I was mainly thinking "hey this could do the planting and the harvesting and the bug-picking too and all the migrant workers could still make a living but do it in a way that is more pleasant and conducive to a happy life."
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:29 PM on December 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
As it is right now there's been huge advances in agriculture technology in the last 15-20 years, but especially the last 10, and most of them seemingly beneficial and very frugal.
Real time GPS/GIS mapping of yields for corn or grain harvest is definitely one area of advancement, and it allows for much lower impact (and cost) for applying fertilizers only where it's needed.
Farmers are also already using drones for more up to date surveys of their land, yields and needs on large scales.
There's also a lot of innovative lower tech stuff like sprouting and prepping seedlings that scale to smaller gardens and farms. One example of this is semi-automated seedling systems where instead of starting your seeds and seedlings in individual soil cubes or biodegradable planting pots and having to hand plant them one at a time, you can start and plant them in these cool paper tape trays filled with soil, get them started and growing early either as normal or indoors in greenhouses using low power LED grow lights, and then those paper trays get loaded into planting machinery that basically peels off each seedling in chains in its own little biodegradable paper cube or box and a then you can use even a small tiller kind of machine to plant whole rows in minutes, and this works with both small walk-behind machinery as well as larger systems that can do whole groups of rows at the same time, kind of like a harverster/combine in reverse.
There have been planting systems somewhat like this for a long time where you can either load up bulk seeds or bulk seedlings, but the benefit of a system like the one above is massively increased yields and less seedling damage and it puts it on par with individual hand planting with much less labor and time.
There's a bunch of other stuff that's low tech but more humane to people doing labor, like harvesting systems where harvesters basically lie down on (usually) shaded platforms extended from the harvesting vehicle and it just crawls forward at a given speed and they can just use their arms and hands for harvesting instead of stooping and crawling through the fields all day, and instead of boxing and packing it themselves in the field they deposit the harvest on conveyor belts that carry it up into the body of the truck where it can be packed and boxed, and then those boxes are dropped as they go or directly deposited into a hauler.
As for the laser mosquito zapper, yeah, I'd love the same thing or fruit flies, too.
This can be done but I don't think I'd want to be around any laser that can actually do that, especially if it was IR. At least not without rated safety goggles. If it's strong enough to zap bugs out of mid air the specular reflections off of those zapped bugs are probably enough to cause eye damage even if you don't take a direct hit to your cornea or retina. Like you really wouldn't want to make a habit of sitting around such a device watching bugs get blasted out of the air.
On that note, I bet you could also make an automated point defense cannon or CIWS for bugs that shot out simple table salt.
Which reminds me, the hot new thing in orchard or field defense against birds is apparently visible lasers and the whole system isn't even at all complicated or smart. It's basically just a couple of visible laser diodes on a gimbal with some basic movement/area limits set, and every so often it just lights up and beams and sweeps lasers over the area they want to protect.
The rapid movement of the visible laser spots over the area apparently scare off the birds by making them think something is moving too fast and too close and it's basically completely harmless to the birds, any bystanders and the crops themselves. It's one of those "Huh, why didn't I think of that!?" ideas that could have existed at least 30 years ago.
Anyway, I'm all in favor of gardening and farm robots. Even for home use, something like an outdoor "Roomba" that just cruises around all the time zapping weeds in the cracks of the pavement or quietly collecting leaves and debris would be way cooler than weedeaters or leaf blowers. Something like these were a very small side piece in the Neuromancer book. Molly harasses one by kicking it while talking to Case while they're on Straylight and it just rights itself and gets back to work right where it lands.
Automated bots like this would be pretty awesome for dealing with invasive species, too. Or just tending to a small home garden doing weeding, pruning and pest control.
posted by loquacious at 5:51 PM on December 5, 2023 [18 favorites]
Real time GPS/GIS mapping of yields for corn or grain harvest is definitely one area of advancement, and it allows for much lower impact (and cost) for applying fertilizers only where it's needed.
Farmers are also already using drones for more up to date surveys of their land, yields and needs on large scales.
There's also a lot of innovative lower tech stuff like sprouting and prepping seedlings that scale to smaller gardens and farms. One example of this is semi-automated seedling systems where instead of starting your seeds and seedlings in individual soil cubes or biodegradable planting pots and having to hand plant them one at a time, you can start and plant them in these cool paper tape trays filled with soil, get them started and growing early either as normal or indoors in greenhouses using low power LED grow lights, and then those paper trays get loaded into planting machinery that basically peels off each seedling in chains in its own little biodegradable paper cube or box and a then you can use even a small tiller kind of machine to plant whole rows in minutes, and this works with both small walk-behind machinery as well as larger systems that can do whole groups of rows at the same time, kind of like a harverster/combine in reverse.
There have been planting systems somewhat like this for a long time where you can either load up bulk seeds or bulk seedlings, but the benefit of a system like the one above is massively increased yields and less seedling damage and it puts it on par with individual hand planting with much less labor and time.
There's a bunch of other stuff that's low tech but more humane to people doing labor, like harvesting systems where harvesters basically lie down on (usually) shaded platforms extended from the harvesting vehicle and it just crawls forward at a given speed and they can just use their arms and hands for harvesting instead of stooping and crawling through the fields all day, and instead of boxing and packing it themselves in the field they deposit the harvest on conveyor belts that carry it up into the body of the truck where it can be packed and boxed, and then those boxes are dropped as they go or directly deposited into a hauler.
As for the laser mosquito zapper, yeah, I'd love the same thing or fruit flies, too.
This can be done but I don't think I'd want to be around any laser that can actually do that, especially if it was IR. At least not without rated safety goggles. If it's strong enough to zap bugs out of mid air the specular reflections off of those zapped bugs are probably enough to cause eye damage even if you don't take a direct hit to your cornea or retina. Like you really wouldn't want to make a habit of sitting around such a device watching bugs get blasted out of the air.
On that note, I bet you could also make an automated point defense cannon or CIWS for bugs that shot out simple table salt.
Which reminds me, the hot new thing in orchard or field defense against birds is apparently visible lasers and the whole system isn't even at all complicated or smart. It's basically just a couple of visible laser diodes on a gimbal with some basic movement/area limits set, and every so often it just lights up and beams and sweeps lasers over the area they want to protect.
The rapid movement of the visible laser spots over the area apparently scare off the birds by making them think something is moving too fast and too close and it's basically completely harmless to the birds, any bystanders and the crops themselves. It's one of those "Huh, why didn't I think of that!?" ideas that could have existed at least 30 years ago.
Anyway, I'm all in favor of gardening and farm robots. Even for home use, something like an outdoor "Roomba" that just cruises around all the time zapping weeds in the cracks of the pavement or quietly collecting leaves and debris would be way cooler than weedeaters or leaf blowers. Something like these were a very small side piece in the Neuromancer book. Molly harasses one by kicking it while talking to Case while they're on Straylight and it just rights itself and gets back to work right where it lands.
Automated bots like this would be pretty awesome for dealing with invasive species, too. Or just tending to a small home garden doing weeding, pruning and pest control.
posted by loquacious at 5:51 PM on December 5, 2023 [18 favorites]
As it is right now there's been huge advances in agriculture technology in the last 15-20 years
You aren't even mentioning watering systems which have moisture sensors planted in the ground, and then when those circular arms are sweeping across the field to irrigate, it will adjust how much water to land on the soil so it is only using the minimum of water that is needed.
posted by hippybear at 5:53 PM on December 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
You aren't even mentioning watering systems which have moisture sensors planted in the ground, and then when those circular arms are sweeping across the field to irrigate, it will adjust how much water to land on the soil so it is only using the minimum of water that is needed.
posted by hippybear at 5:53 PM on December 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
Surprised that no one has cited the film Runaway. In the opening scene, Tom Selleck confronts an out-of-control field robot. Construction robots and mechanical spiders are also involved.
posted by SPrintF at 6:15 PM on December 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by SPrintF at 6:15 PM on December 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
Excuse me, did you say "knives"?
Rotating knives, yes...
posted by senor biggles at 6:18 PM on December 5, 2023 [6 favorites]
Rotating knives, yes...
posted by senor biggles at 6:18 PM on December 5, 2023 [6 favorites]
Also, there is harvesting tech being developed. I've seen reports about apple harvesters, grape harvesters, even raspberry harvesters [delicate touch!] having been developed.
I honestly cannot say that the development of robot fruit agriculture workers is going to be good for the human worker world, but any of it will be more humane than what human workers endure in any day today.
We've got to imagine a post-capitalist world quickly because we're beginning to enter a world where the bottom layer tier will disappear and then what?
posted by hippybear at 6:40 PM on December 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
I honestly cannot say that the development of robot fruit agriculture workers is going to be good for the human worker world, but any of it will be more humane than what human workers endure in any day today.
We've got to imagine a post-capitalist world quickly because we're beginning to enter a world where the bottom layer tier will disappear and then what?
posted by hippybear at 6:40 PM on December 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
Even for home use, something like an outdoor "Roomba" that just cruises around all the time zapping weeds in the cracks of the pavement or quietly collecting leaves and debris would be way cooler than weedeaters or leaf blowers.
Convince me you've programmed it to specifically murder bindweed and goatsheads and I will fork over money for my own little garden murderbot immediately.
posted by deludingmyself at 6:56 PM on December 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
Convince me you've programmed it to specifically murder bindweed and goatsheads and I will fork over money for my own little garden murderbot immediately.
posted by deludingmyself at 6:56 PM on December 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
Basically all the human senses are really difficult for computers... we've gotten hearing down pretty good, but sight? that's lagging behind. And let's not even get into taste.
posted by hippybear at 4:47 PM on December 5
I’ll say. Yesterday, my neighbor’s robo-weeder was decked out in spats, sweat pants and what appeared to be a crab pot on its head.
posted by skyscraper at 6:59 PM on December 5, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 4:47 PM on December 5
I’ll say. Yesterday, my neighbor’s robo-weeder was decked out in spats, sweat pants and what appeared to be a crab pot on its head.
posted by skyscraper at 6:59 PM on December 5, 2023 [10 favorites]
And adding - I loved this post! More like this!
posted by skyscraper at 7:00 PM on December 5, 2023
posted by skyscraper at 7:00 PM on December 5, 2023
I spent my 16th and 17th summers working on an organic farm, and that was back in 1990 when organic was still a kind of weird fringe thing rather than a section in the grocery store.
What I learned is that "organic" is a code phrase that means "huge amounts of hard physical labor". Because we cut down the weeds by hand, or yanked them out by hand. The owner tried to use biological alternatives to pesticides, he bought ladybugs by the gallon to release on the farm in hopes they'd stick around and eat pests, he bought little squares of paper with glued on eggs from those horrifying wasps that lay their eggs inside pests. It worked better than you'd think, but still not very well.
If you've never worked a vegetable farm at harvest time, well, it's backbreaking. All the veggies are at the height where you have to stoop over to pick them and after a few minutes of that you are not happy with your spine.
All of which is to say, I am really happy to see advances in this sort of thing.
As for mosquitoes, I'm not sure you'd need to have the laser be bright enough to kill the mosquito in one more or less instant shot. It'd be the most satisfying way to do it, like a long range version of those bug zapper things, but a laser just barely powerful enough to burn a hole in a sheet of paper after a second will kill a mosquito just fine you shouldn't have to worry about reflection blindness.
They sell anti-bug salt shotgun toys already, but I think on a larger scale it'd be impractical as enough salt to really do much would probably poison the soil.
posted by sotonohito at 7:21 PM on December 5, 2023 [8 favorites]
What I learned is that "organic" is a code phrase that means "huge amounts of hard physical labor". Because we cut down the weeds by hand, or yanked them out by hand. The owner tried to use biological alternatives to pesticides, he bought ladybugs by the gallon to release on the farm in hopes they'd stick around and eat pests, he bought little squares of paper with glued on eggs from those horrifying wasps that lay their eggs inside pests. It worked better than you'd think, but still not very well.
If you've never worked a vegetable farm at harvest time, well, it's backbreaking. All the veggies are at the height where you have to stoop over to pick them and after a few minutes of that you are not happy with your spine.
All of which is to say, I am really happy to see advances in this sort of thing.
As for mosquitoes, I'm not sure you'd need to have the laser be bright enough to kill the mosquito in one more or less instant shot. It'd be the most satisfying way to do it, like a long range version of those bug zapper things, but a laser just barely powerful enough to burn a hole in a sheet of paper after a second will kill a mosquito just fine you shouldn't have to worry about reflection blindness.
They sell anti-bug salt shotgun toys already, but I think on a larger scale it'd be impractical as enough salt to really do much would probably poison the soil.
posted by sotonohito at 7:21 PM on December 5, 2023 [8 favorites]
You don't need the laser to kill the mosquito or fly or whatever, you'd just need it to intersect with their beautiful gossamer wings and fry those wings and cause them to fall to the ground. It's not a -pew pew pew- targeting their bodies hoping for a satisfying vaporization, it's "sweeping the area they fly through, hoping to damage one wing enough that they fall, maybe both wings, but no fly means no survival" level of sort of cruel attrition.
It's not blasting and exploding insect Tie Fighters with lasers, not that at all.
posted by hippybear at 7:28 PM on December 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
It's not blasting and exploding insect Tie Fighters with lasers, not that at all.
posted by hippybear at 7:28 PM on December 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
The idea of a salt-shooting CIWS for mosquitoes made me giggle, because existing CIWS aren't snipers, they're chain guns. Imagine sitting at the picnic table, when you hear a high-pitched whine and then BRRRRRRRRRRT as a stream of salt grains blasts a mosquito out of the sky, inches from your ear.
posted by agentofselection at 7:30 PM on December 5, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by agentofselection at 7:30 PM on December 5, 2023 [8 favorites]
and then BRRRRRRRRRRT as a stream of salt grains blasts a mosquito out of the sky, inches from your ear.
And across the food on the table, and maybe into the eye of your niece sitting across the table from you.
She's not blind, but she's going to the hospital!
posted by hippybear at 7:32 PM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
And across the food on the table, and maybe into the eye of your niece sitting across the table from you.
She's not blind, but she's going to the hospital!
posted by hippybear at 7:32 PM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
Surprised that no one has cited the film Runaway
Well if you'd just give us a minute...
posted by tigrrrlily at 7:52 PM on December 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
Well if you'd just give us a minute...
posted by tigrrrlily at 7:52 PM on December 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's not blasting and exploding insect Tie Fighters with lasers, not that at all.
Well then what's the point?
posted by sotonohito at 9:31 PM on December 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
Well then what's the point?
posted by sotonohito at 9:31 PM on December 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
Ah Runaway. Tom Selleck, Kirstie Alley, and....Gene Simmons. It's awful. I love it. It was the first thing I thought of when I saw this article.
posted by ninazer0 at 9:40 PM on December 5, 2023
posted by ninazer0 at 9:40 PM on December 5, 2023
There are so many jobs that are gross, physically demanding, and outright dangerous that it would be awesome to use robots for. And yeah, we're going to have to let go of the idea that everyone will have a job as we currently define it at some point, and just give everyone what they need regardless of employment status. But we could do that, if we have the will.
Anyway, farm labor is brutal and I'm happy to let it be as automated as possible.
posted by emjaybee at 10:22 PM on December 5, 2023 [6 favorites]
Anyway, farm labor is brutal and I'm happy to let it be as automated as possible.
posted by emjaybee at 10:22 PM on December 5, 2023 [6 favorites]
This guy built a DIY autonomous AI-powered weed zapper for his garden. It uses a Fresnel lens to zap the weeds (focused sun power).
posted by flug at 10:38 PM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by flug at 10:38 PM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
Plant-tending robots!? Somebody page
Dewey and Huey! ("Unfortunately, we lost Louie...")
posted by Rash at 10:57 PM on December 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
Dewey and Huey! ("Unfortunately, we lost Louie...")
posted by Rash at 10:57 PM on December 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
Don't fear the reaper, weedcontrolfreakrobots are machines of loving grace .
posted by hortense at 11:03 PM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by hortense at 11:03 PM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
Some much of our developing technology is being created for the purpose of not having to pay wages... And it seems to particularly target the jobs that pay the lowest wages - I think because for the capitalist that will create the biggest savings by eliminated the largest number of employees. It makes more sense to try to eliminate field workers from your payroll than it does to eliminate shipping managers, because the cost of thousands of field workers is more than that of a handful of shipping managers - and anyway you have already eliminated a few hundred shipping manager jobs by giving the few you retained spreadsheets to do the work previous done by many.
I am not remotely denying that field work is backbreaking, brutal and massively underpaid, but what will field workers do to for income when field work goes? And what will the wages of the next lowest level become? The wages there will be positioned to slip down to the level that the field workers used to labour under. The workers eliminated from farm work will be unlikely to find work as well paid as what they had been doing before farming bots took their jobs. I don't know if they will find jobs at all.
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:40 AM on December 6, 2023
I am not remotely denying that field work is backbreaking, brutal and massively underpaid, but what will field workers do to for income when field work goes? And what will the wages of the next lowest level become? The wages there will be positioned to slip down to the level that the field workers used to labour under. The workers eliminated from farm work will be unlikely to find work as well paid as what they had been doing before farming bots took their jobs. I don't know if they will find jobs at all.
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:40 AM on December 6, 2023
Gates Foundation teamed with Intellectual Ventures to make a mosquito laser more than a decade ago. I’m pretty sure it was considered a pest control failure.
posted by Headfullofair at 5:54 AM on December 6, 2023
posted by Headfullofair at 5:54 AM on December 6, 2023
[content warning:gruesome mosquito death]Nathan Myhrvold ensured the mosquito laser was recorded in incredible slow mo.
posted by Headfullofair at 5:59 AM on December 6, 2023
posted by Headfullofair at 5:59 AM on December 6, 2023
Some much of our developing technology is being created for the purpose of not having to pay wages... And it seems to particularly target the jobs that pay the lowest wages - I think because for the capitalist that will create the biggest savings by eliminated the largest number of employees.
Counterpoint: For farm labor finding people who want to work the jobs at the pay offered is hard enough that machine labor keeps expanding. (see Steven Colbert in the time of his Cobert Report) You have the dairy farms with the robotic feeding, you have tractors getting larger and larger to cut back on the number of people hours per acre. There is a reason for the song questioning how you are going to keep 'em down on the farm after seeing Paris.
Then the perversity of handing a short hoe so the people doing the overseeing of work know the hoeing is happening because the worker is BENT OVER. Note also how uncommon prone weeders are. So why would you sign up for that labor?
(and one of the people who was a first mover on the laser mosquito zapper was the ex Mircrosoft guy Myhrvold.)
posted by rough ashlar at 5:40 PM on December 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
Counterpoint: For farm labor finding people who want to work the jobs at the pay offered is hard enough that machine labor keeps expanding. (see Steven Colbert in the time of his Cobert Report) You have the dairy farms with the robotic feeding, you have tractors getting larger and larger to cut back on the number of people hours per acre. There is a reason for the song questioning how you are going to keep 'em down on the farm after seeing Paris.
Then the perversity of handing a short hoe so the people doing the overseeing of work know the hoeing is happening because the worker is BENT OVER. Note also how uncommon prone weeders are. So why would you sign up for that labor?
(and one of the people who was a first mover on the laser mosquito zapper was the ex Mircrosoft guy Myhrvold.)
posted by rough ashlar at 5:40 PM on December 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
Jane the Brown
There are two answers to your question.
People like m argue that we should give up on the Capitalist idea of having everyone (well, everyone except the rich) work and fund the lives of the people out out of the workforce by technology so they can act like characters in a Jane Austin novel: develop incredibly complex and convoluted social lives, attend parties, take up a dilettante's study of whatever catches their fancy, and so on.
The other answer, the Elon Musk answer, is that they are worthless parasites who should starve and that we should establish a society wherein anyone who can't sell their labor to a billionaire is booted into a slum and must beg for scraps.
There is currently some disagreement about how to achieve the first scenario while dealing with the minor matter that the people who want the second scenario are the ones who have all the power.
posted by sotonohito at 6:58 PM on December 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
There are two answers to your question.
People like m argue that we should give up on the Capitalist idea of having everyone (well, everyone except the rich) work and fund the lives of the people out out of the workforce by technology so they can act like characters in a Jane Austin novel: develop incredibly complex and convoluted social lives, attend parties, take up a dilettante's study of whatever catches their fancy, and so on.
The other answer, the Elon Musk answer, is that they are worthless parasites who should starve and that we should establish a society wherein anyone who can't sell their labor to a billionaire is booted into a slum and must beg for scraps.
There is currently some disagreement about how to achieve the first scenario while dealing with the minor matter that the people who want the second scenario are the ones who have all the power.
posted by sotonohito at 6:58 PM on December 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
Or for a more “neutral” answer based in economics, a lot of this ag tech is being developed for situations where capital intensive machinery is cheaper than human labor, for example in Japan, where farmers are now a declining, aging population. They have compact rice planting and harvesting machines that are can make the labor of your 70 year old farmer go a lot farther. (I watch a lot of sake production videos.)
When labor is expensive, eg scarce, capital tends to be substituted.
You have to go down the hall, as it were, to philosophy or sociology, to better think through the moral and systemic implications of these kinds of choices. Which is essential because I think a lot of the time people are making economic or rational individual choices that can have problematic collective consequences, but doing so without much thought to the eventual scenarios. (Cue climate change, plastic pollution in the oceans, etc. as examples of other individual vs collectivist problems.)
/economic sociologist
posted by ec2y at 3:54 AM on December 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
When labor is expensive, eg scarce, capital tends to be substituted.
You have to go down the hall, as it were, to philosophy or sociology, to better think through the moral and systemic implications of these kinds of choices. Which is essential because I think a lot of the time people are making economic or rational individual choices that can have problematic collective consequences, but doing so without much thought to the eventual scenarios. (Cue climate change, plastic pollution in the oceans, etc. as examples of other individual vs collectivist problems.)
/economic sociologist
posted by ec2y at 3:54 AM on December 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
(I’m definitely not against innovation like this though!)
posted by ec2y at 3:56 AM on December 17, 2023
posted by ec2y at 3:56 AM on December 17, 2023
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OH GOD WHAT HORRORS HAVE WE WROUGHT???
posted by hippybear at 3:03 PM on December 5, 2023 [5 favorites]