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Farming the AI way We’re only beginning to discover what kinds of previously-never-thought-of innovations artificial intelligence is making possible. “It blows my mind that, at the dawn of the artificial intelligence era, our idea of revolutionary tech is to slap AI onto some enterprise resource planner,” said Sam Wright, head of partnerships at Huntr. "We stand at a paradigm shift, and we need to realign our goalposts.” The transition means evolving from AI-as-labor replacement to AI-as-innovation machine. “So much of the conversation around AI focuses on either how it can enhance the work that humans do, making it faster, or easier, or how it can do work instead of humans,” said Shauli Mizrahi, co-founder and CTO at Rep AI. "We’ll see more innovative thinking about AI as a means to do jobs that either don’t exist or are incredibly non-scalable.” In a recent post, Judson Althoff, CEO of Microsoft’s commercial business, described a number of the novel and innovative ways his customers are employing AI. For example, Ralph Lauren developed a solution that blended fashion with cutting-edge AI. Its “Ask Ralph” employs natural language processing to provide styling tips and outfit recommendations from across the Polo Ralph Lauren brand. It also supports “complex queries with exploratory or nuanced information needs with contextual understanding; and can discern tone, satisfaction and intent to refine recommendations.” AI may even generate something completely unexpected: a back-to-physical counter-trend. “The rise of gen AI related digital materials – AI generated images, voices, videos – triggers a hunt for trusted communication channels,” said Kai Hattendorf , CEO at HTF Consulting “Top of these are face-to-face events - be they corporate events, conventions, or trade shows.” While AI automates a lot of low-level engagement where agents will work with agents, “it frees capacities for face-to-face interactions with customers,” said Hattendorf. “So an unexpected development that will spring from AI will be an unprecedented rise in the relevance of real, in-person meetings, leading to a top-periodization of travel to facilitate these and a growth of what I call the reality economy.” AI innovation is poised to pop up in many unexpected places – such as small family farmers. For example, Priva, a company based in The Netherlands, has employs AI to communicate with plants about their watering needs, as well as to harvest fruit and vegetables. “No one’s talking about how AI is poised to transform small farms into modern gardens of Eden,” said Wright. “On weekdays, I’m scaling up an AI startup focused on job search, and on weekends, I’m growing food." Smaller farms are dying, being consumed by large agribusiness, Wright said. “There has to be a better way. "Let’s ask AI to design a closed-loop, self-sustaining community that maximizes quality life years for all current and future humans. Incorporate regenerative agriculture and best growing practices so residents need only work 10 hours a week on food production, making small farms modern gardens of Eden with all basic needs met. Make it reproducible, too.” Editorial StandardsReprints & Permissions
