The weather in Fuming county

AI is far away from human beings, either far away or very close.

In art, it is a dystopian future. As depicted in the new game Cyberpunk 2077, tracking, chip, implantation, confrontation between virtual and reality, mutual exclusion between machinery and body, and technology replacing real people to exercise unlimited power.

In reality, it is the subversion and reorganization from cognition to industry. From Alpha Dog beating Ke Jie, Open AI beating DOTA2 professionals, to the popularity of cloud computing and the full deployment of 5G.

Nowadays, AI has begun to quietly own strawberries, setting off a wave of "smart agriculture".

Watching you grow up through the screen

65438+February 16, "Ai Strawberry" won a great victory.

The average yield is 65,438+096.32% higher than that of the traditional farmer group, and the input-output ratio is 75.565,438+0% higher than that of the traditional farmer group.

Strawberries made of AI, round, smooth and red, stand out among the contestants and attract everyone's admiration.

This is the result of four AI teams, including Zhiduobei and CyberFarmer HortiGraph.

In this digital agricultural planting contest of "Artificial Intelligence VS Top Farmers" sponsored by Pinduoduo and China Agricultural University, four AI teams, together with four new farmers, completed a batch of strawberry planting in 120 days, which has undergone a severe "test" in terms of taste, yield, input-output ratio and commercial value.

Unlike the "hands-on" of the new farmer team, the AI team can only remotely control it in Amsterdam, Beijing, Nanjing and Kunming. Players can only see one screen.

So how did the AI team produce the sweet and milky strawberries?

"Carefully designed" strawberries

Did you succeed? 24 hours without dead angle monitoring, a juicy, full and soft AI strawberry was born.

Coordinates: Guo Yun Industrial Park, Fumin County, Yunnan Province.

In four planting greenhouses, cameras hanging on the supports, temperature and humidity monitoring devices above the planting pots, sensors in the soil and other equipment are fully armed, and the growth of strawberries is being observed.

Although it is "unpopular", there are digital flashes such as temperature, humidity and lighting on the electronic screen in the shed.

Strawberry, strawberry, do you still want to grow wildly?

And in order to grow the perfect strawberry, each team also built an "AI planting brain".

From growth model, planting decision-making to growth state identification, an "intelligent planting control system" composed of various algorithms makes AI an "expert" to examine strawberries from head to toe.

Of course, the decision is still to be handed over to human BOSS. After getting the big data of the combination of environmental factors such as temperature, light, water and fertilizer provided by AI, each team member will use this as a benchmark to adjust the water-fertilizer ratio, irrigation scheme and even strawberry growth model, and give the weekly planting strategy to guide the final production.

One of the bosses released a "trick". The CyberFarmer HortiGraph team, composed of young scientists from China Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China Agricultural University, National Research Center for Agricultural Intelligent Equipment Engineering and Ghent University, directly developed an intelligent strawberry control system based on knowledge map and machine vision, and trained AI for automatic control.

The result of such a set of "open hanging" configuration is beyond doubt. In terms of output and input-output ratio, CyberFarmer HortiGraph team was ahead of everyone, and it finally won the AI Group championship.

In addition to the champion team, several other teams have also come up with their own "killer".

Satisfy your picky.

On the one hand, it is the remote digital "carnival" of the AI group, on the other hand, it is the "sighing at the ocean" of the new peasant group.

"Without planting experience and manpower, the yield per mu is three times that of ours." Speaking of competitors, Ji Rongxi, the captain of the new farmer's "Ji Rongxi Model Worker Team", expressed sincere feelings.

Sun Yuqing, a member of the new farmer "Yan Jiutian Women's Team", also said: In fact, it is really difficult for farmers to grow a strawberry.

Sun Yuqing spends at least 12 hour on strawberries every day.

At 6 o'clock in the morning, she will get up and go to the base to open a shed, dehumidify, observe plants and take photos. "The biggest wish is to automatically open the shed and sleep for a while in the morning."

On the other hand, in the AI group, not only is the daily remote control time only about half that of the new farmers' group, but they spend most of their time "burning their brains" compared with complicated manual labor such as sowing, fertilizing and controlling pests and diseases.

You get up to sow, he is sleeping. You planted it for ten hours, and he started to get up and think.

Can your cost be low?

In addition to the cost, pure strawberries also face risks such as pests and diseases and extreme weather.

Because strawberries are delicate and moist, greenhouses are expensive. What if farmers can't afford sheds? Tens of thousands of plastic sheets on the top of the arched shed.

But can plastic greenhouses serve "sick" strawberries? So gradually, "princess diseases" such as gray mold, powdery mildew and virus disease began to find you.

The unpredictable weather is also a headache. The drought in 20 12 and the snowstorm in 20 18 caused great losses to strawberries in Sun Yuqing.

How about strawberries? Not only the environment, but also people.

"Usually, only cultivators with many years of experience can judge the flowering period by the flowering state, so as to apply fertilizer accurately," Ji Rongxi said. "The professional quality of growers is very high, but artificial intelligence can do what you like."

Under the monitoring of big data and the supervision of "think tanks", delicate strawberries often grow regularly.

"Compared with manpower, the support of big data can achieve more accurate control of water, fertilizer, temperature and air humidity, thus promoting the rapid growth, flowering and fruiting of plants." Ruan Jiwei, a technical support expert of the contest and a researcher at Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said.

"We actually want to introduce some advantages of artificial intelligence technology," Sun Yuqing said. "For example, we will hand over the future pest management to the data for detection and processing, so as to achieve precise control. For example, using automatic control to save manpower. AI does have certain benefits in production. "

Farmers are unemployed?

The victory of "AI Strawberry" indicates the new trend of the industry, and also triggers a new anxiety: Are farmers going to lose their jobs?

After all, there is a precedent for artificial intelligence to "grab the rice bowl". From Goldman Sachs replacing 600 artificial stock traders with AI, to Microsoft eliminating dozens of journalists with AI, and then to unmanned driving and unmanned sales. "artificial intelligence employees" seem to be scrambling to seize the position.

Is agriculture also doomed?

Let's look at a set of data first. According to the data from the website of the National Bureau of Statistics, according to the results of the sixth national census, the rural working-age population aged 16 and above is about 5120,000, of which only 279 million are engaged in agricultural labor. In other words, the rural labor force lost 45%.

Li, a Changjiang scholar at the School of Information and Electrical Engineering, believes that the agricultural labor force will continue to decrease in the future. "At present, the proportion of agricultural labor force is 28%, and I believe it will drop to about 5% in the next 30 years."

I have to admit that the farm work of leaving early and returning late and overdrawing physical strength can no longer keep most young people in the countryside.

"AI actually made up for the gap in agricultural manpower to a certain extent and liberated planting experts and farmers."

Yan Jiwei, a strawberry expert at Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said.

For the farmer uncles who are currently working hard, the popularity of AI also provides a road to career transformation.

"While training machines with algorithms, I also hope to train farmers, so that they can flexibly master the application of this technology and turn farmers into skilled workers." Cheng Biao, captain of the "Zhi Duo Berry" team, said.

At present, relevant training on AI machine operation has been launched on the market. Farmers' technical ability and work efficiency are expected to be improved, and they are realizing the transformation from "manpower" to "talent".

However, experts also said that to fully realize "easy agriculture", we must rely on a new round of technological innovation.

"The current AI technology still has limitations, and the seeding and picking process still needs manual intervention." Lin Sen, a member of the network farmer HortiGraph team, said, "With the popularity of robots such as rocker picking, it is expected to be unmanned in the future."

He, director of the Key Laboratory of Agricultural Internet of Things of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and professor of Northwest A&F University, expressed confidence in the prospect of "smart agriculture". "In another 10 year, some areas will realize unmanned farms, unmanned pastures and high-end plant factories."

At present, the winning AI teams of each group are cooperating with academic institutions such as China Agricultural Day University to transform the judgment and thinking of agricultural experts into algorithms, trying to standardize these experiences in order to promote them in more agricultural fields. The new technology has been put into commercial scale production and is already on the way.

"China's agriculture is a real sea, but it still lacks standardized planting and management." Qiu Chen, vice president of Pinduoduo, said, "We hope to attract more high-tech talents to invest in agriculture, bring higher added value to agricultural products, bring real money to agricultural growers and promote the modernization of agriculture in China."

"This competition will play a milestone role in the development of smart agriculture. The introduction of digital technology means great opportunities for agricultural and rural changes. " Zhao Chunjiang, an academician of China Academy of Engineering, said.

It is foreseeable that "smart agriculture" is not limited to strawberries, but also permeates all aspects of life. This is not only a long scientific and technological exploration, but also a change in production mode and a new round of subversion and reorganization of industrial structure.

Strawberry, don't be afraid of AI, you have to grow up.