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points by pixl97 3 days ago | 0 comments

>tractors aren’t driving themselves

Depends what you mean by that. In the top end tractors they are driving themselves 90%+ of the time. The guy in the tractor is just there to make sure nothing goes wrong.

There is a lot of automation tech in farming, it's just not all spread evenly.

[–] goodmythical 3 days ago

Hell, lawn mowers have been able to drive themselves for a few years. But then, we rarely see that because the machines are too costly for most individual families.

Same with the tractors. John down around the bend probably doesn't have a GPS driven tractor, but Deere sells 'em, so there must be customers.

[–] toxik 3 days ago

I think autonomous mowers are more a tech problem. Just like the vacuum cleaners, they're only successful in the case of literally zero eventualities. Rake left out in the grass? Ope, guess you need a new mower blade. Dog poop or slick of jam on the floor? Congratulations, literal Picasso has been made for you. On the floor.

Ranting on, even dishwasher machines are like this. You have to stack and unstack, easily the most labor intensive part of the job, and you have to do it just right. Spatula jams the upper spray arm spindle? Sorry, best I can do is literally baked on residues that will NOT come off next cycle.

I'm not sure what point I was making but I'm sure this connects to shoddy LLM software in some way.

[–] pixl97 3 days ago

With things like tractors there is more financial leeway in providing fast image recognition to avoid problems.

With lawnmowers having a full agi nearly human level system is needed, but way too expensive/complicated for a device that does one thing every two weeks.