I recently attended a beef industry convention where there was a panel discussion on artificial intelligence (AI). It was a fascinating conversation, partly because the topic itself is intriguing in its own right and partly because I’m always interested in seeing the ways technological advances get adapted into tools for the beef industry. This discussion got my thoughts primed and made me notice more of the tech on display as I wandered through the trade show attached to the convention.
It seemed that almost every vendor had an app, software, website or digital network of some sort that producers could use to more efficiently manage their cattle, finances, recordkeeping and more. In the middle of all this hubbub, I was hit with a memory of the first of these trade shows that I visited seven years earlier.
During my first trade show, I came across two men advertising a GPS tracking eartag. Everything was still in the development stages, but they had brought a prototype eartag that looked as if someone had taken the hard drive of a computer and superglued it to an eartag – not exactly user-friendly. Fast-forward seven years, and I pass by this same company, now with a fully functioning, definitely more lightweight GPS tag, along with more bells and whistles and integrations. I stopped and visited with one of the fellows in the booth, who happened to be one of the two original men I’d visited with all those years ago. How time has flown, and the industry along with it!
Today, the emerging technology is AI. With the rapid growth of AI usage in many industries, the beef industry included, it has been interesting to see where the lines are being drawn, where people are deciding how and when it is appropriate to use AI and how it can be either a handy tool or wildly misleading when it comes to collecting data to make more informed decisions.
Something that was said during the AI panel discussion stuck with me. One of the panelists talked about not using AI for the sake of AI and instead asking, “Does it help me as a rancher?” The purpose of using AI in a ranch setting should be to either make processes more efficient or help make the information you track – weaning weights, grazing patterns, breeding and vaccination records, etc. – more understandable so that you, the producer, can make more informed decisions about your ranch and put more of your energy and focus where it belongs: your family, livestock and land, instead of in an office crunching numbers.
Times, they are a-changing. You need look no further than the pages of this magazine to see that technology in its many forms is becoming an ever more integral part of the world we live in, so if the big bad AI machine ever comes too close for comfort, fear not. Informed, deliberate decision-making and a grasp on utilizing AI as a tool instead of putting it in the driver’s seat will be key to taking advantage of the tools that are now at our fingertips, and those that are sure to come in the future.
