AI technology is becoming pretty popular all over the world. Ranging from entertainment to medical users, you may be surprised just who is taking advantage of AI research. In recent headlines, unsuspecting farmers in China have been using this technology to help with pigs.
Pig rearing has been a big thing in China for centuries. Traditionally, this was mostly something people did right in their backyards. However, with the latest industrial booms, farmers have been trying to modernize their pork industry in attempts to keep up with the high demand.
Just how many pigs in China are there that they need a technological intervention? Around 700 million. That’s half of the entire world’s pig population. Chinese tech giant, Alibaba, has collaborated with pig farming corporation Dekon Group and pig food manufacturer Tequ Group to launch an AI-powered pig-tracking system.
The program will use machine vision as opposed to radio frequency tags (RFID) to follow pigs around farms. This will save farmers time and money and will revolutionize the pork industry.
This is not the first time AI technology has been found on the fam. Cargill, a US agricultural giant, has also started testing facial recognition technologies to keep track of cows. John Deere also just bought an AI startup to incorporate AI technologies in crops.
AI technology is really bringing farms into the future and it is only going to get more sophisticated with time.