How Can Artificial Intelligence Serve the Beef Cattle Industry?
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
Artificial intelligence has touched all corners of agriculture, but how has it affected the sectors more reluctant to adopt new technologies? Lee Leachman of Leachman Cattle Co., says from his experience in the cattle industry, learning how to ask the right questions when it comes to beef genetics is where ranchers will see the biggest return.
Leachman… “Anybody who's fiddled around with AI knows that the hardest part about AI is asking AI the right question. AI will answer the question you ask; sometimes the question you ask is not quite the right question and the answer AI gives you will show you that. I think genetics is a lot like that right. You can ask the question and you know we do that every day, right. We say, what traits going to be important next but then you also have to have a real-world part of it. As you exert selection pressure for the things you want, you're going to get some things you don't want. You know AI is not going to help you figure that out because AI doesn't know the trait that you've never measured has suddenly become a problem.”
Leachman believes the real benefit of AI will be seen in data acquisition and assessment.
Leachman… “What AI is going to do is it's going to help us figure out how to make more progress on the traits we've already measured. It's not so much how we've analyzed it. It's more that we've gotten the important data and then we balanced it appropriately.”
That’s Lee Leachman of Leachman Cattle Co.
