Funny you should choose the sickle over the hammer. In industrialized nations commodity crops like wheat, soy, corn, and rice are predominantly mechanically harvested. But tree fruit, berries, and a lot of veggies remain hand-picked or have a mixed manual/mechanical harvesting method that’s much more labor intensive than a combine mowing down endless acres of wheat.
The hammer however has seen a massive decline in full time use across construction sites in developed nations. It’s still a useful tool and most workers carry one, but pneumatic nail guns dominate new construction in developed countries that use wood as their base material.
I’d also push back on your claim that hard manual labor in developed nations is automated. Mechanically assisted to varying levels, like a pneumatic nail gun instead of a hammer, or a haybaler instead of a sickle and building a stack, but it’s still got humans putting hours of physical effort into using those machines to achieve the finished product. There’s people behind home construction or remodels, strawberry picking, road construction, and wildland fire fighting to name a few.
…i used a framing hammer to build a wood fence last weekend; it felt good but also surprisingly old-fashioned by comparison to the nail gun the builder used for the original construction…
As the narrator says “the future farmer might not be holding a shovel, they might be holding a remote control”. Technology changes the means by which the humans do the labor, but there’s still a human behind the machine, not an automaton.
DJI is not marketing their ag drones as fully automated (source is their most recent annual report with other shots from their website) but as tool for labor reduction, precision, and for efficiency in applications like seeding/chemical dispersal, aerial surveillance, load carrying, and time saving.
Operators use software to plot their routes and remain present during use.
While they do discuss automated assistance and there is potential for refining such technology, there still remains a human component.
AI does have great potential for not only reducing the demand on human physical labor, it also has promise for reducing the amount of toxic byproducts that end up in the environment due to the demands of mass agriculture. Carbon AI is a Large Plant Model that can currently identify over 150 million weeds in real time and uses precision laser blasts to kill them. However, even this is not currently a fully automated process as the machine requires human operation.
Your example is not AI labor, it’s a modern technological tool that improves efficiency while decreasing the physical toll on human workers that agriculture has historically taken. It’s also not a technology limited to a single country. DJI sells ag drones worldwide and their website highlites the success of their product in Brazil, Mexico, and the recent policy shifts in FAA regulations in the states to allow American farmers to adopt this tech. It’s a fantastic advancement but it’s not even close to eliminating human labor.
Funny you should choose the sickle over the hammer. In industrialized nations commodity crops like wheat, soy, corn, and rice are predominantly mechanically harvested. But tree fruit, berries, and a lot of veggies remain hand-picked or have a mixed manual/mechanical harvesting method that’s much more labor intensive than a combine mowing down endless acres of wheat.
The hammer however has seen a massive decline in full time use across construction sites in developed nations. It’s still a useful tool and most workers carry one, but pneumatic nail guns dominate new construction in developed countries that use wood as their base material.
I’d also push back on your claim that hard manual labor in developed nations is automated. Mechanically assisted to varying levels, like a pneumatic nail gun instead of a hammer, or a haybaler instead of a sickle and building a stack, but it’s still got humans putting hours of physical effort into using those machines to achieve the finished product. There’s people behind home construction or remodels, strawberry picking, road construction, and wildland fire fighting to name a few.
…i used a framing hammer to build a wood fence last weekend; it felt good but also surprisingly old-fashioned by comparison to the nail gun the builder used for the original construction…
https://youtu.be/tbxlMM8AQsU
As the narrator says “the future farmer might not be holding a shovel, they might be holding a remote control”. Technology changes the means by which the humans do the labor, but there’s still a human behind the machine, not an automaton.
The difference is how and why AI labor is utilized from one nation to another.
DJI is not marketing their ag drones as fully automated (source is their most recent annual report with other shots from their website) but as tool for labor reduction, precision, and for efficiency in applications like seeding/chemical dispersal, aerial surveillance, load carrying, and time saving.
https://www-cdn.djiits.com/cms_uploads/ckeditor/attachments/9211/46fc4e7ab0c2e7161f5bccd991e57f55.pdf
Operators use software to plot their routes and remain present during use.
While they do discuss automated assistance and there is potential for refining such technology, there still remains a human component.
AI does have great potential for not only reducing the demand on human physical labor, it also has promise for reducing the amount of toxic byproducts that end up in the environment due to the demands of mass agriculture. Carbon AI is a Large Plant Model that can currently identify over 150 million weeds in real time and uses precision laser blasts to kill them. However, even this is not currently a fully automated process as the machine requires human operation.
Yes. And?
Your example is not AI labor, it’s a modern technological tool that improves efficiency while decreasing the physical toll on human workers that agriculture has historically taken. It’s also not a technology limited to a single country. DJI sells ag drones worldwide and their website highlites the success of their product in Brazil, Mexico, and the recent policy shifts in FAA regulations in the states to allow American farmers to adopt this tech. It’s a fantastic advancement but it’s not even close to eliminating human labor.