Fight. Flight. Freeze.
When it comes to generative AI, the typical “fight or flight” responses don’t really apply. But the ever-increasing number of options may give you pause before getting started.
From Claude to ChatGPT, Copilot, Deepseek, Grok, Gemini and many more, these artificial intelligence technologies all promise to become game-changers in your day-to-day activities. They probably won’t revolutionize your operation, but they could still prove to be useful tools on your farm.
Getting started
When you’re ready to dip your toes into the generative AI waters, the good news is you don’t need to fuss over which program in particular to use, according to Yurii Kovalchuk, CEO of Qaltivate.
“All of them work,” he said. “They have very good foundational knowledge of how agriculture works.”
Looking at three popular subscription-based generative AI programs, here’s what tends to do best at certain tasks, according to the Substack newsletter Artificial Corner:
- Following instructions: Claude Pro
- Audio and video analysis: Gemini Pro
- Casual use: ChatGPT Plus
- Search and browsing: all three
- Image and video generation: ChatGPT Plus and Gemini Pro
- Coding: Claude Pro
- Daily limits: Gemini Pro (300-plus prompts allowed per day)
How you use the program will drive good outcomes, Kovalchuk added.
“Creating good prompts is 60% to 70% of your success,” he said. “The better prompts you create, the more definitive results you’ll get.”
And because many of these programs offer free versions, it doesn’t hurt to check them against each other.
“One trick is to use one program to ask a question and then ask a second program to review those results,” Kovalchuk said. “That’s another way to double-check the output. Sometimes these programs generate nice-looking material, but it doesn’t align with reality.”
Janice Person, founder and CEO of Grounded Communications, agreed that pushing back against the results will help keep the tech in check.
“Chatbots don’t do that crucial thinking unless you’re going back and forth and asking those critical questions,” she said.
For example, if you were to ask ChatGPT about purchasing a new combine, it will assume that’s the outcome you want. Therefore, you may want to ask follow-up questions about maintaining existing equipment to see what other advice it may offer.
Another important thing to consider is whether to use free services or pay for more premium features. Premium tiers provide a variety of storage options and a larger cap on the number of prompts you can use. More importantly, paying folds in a layer of privacy.
“Farmers need to think about the fact that what they input is not confidential if they’re not paying for it,” Person said. “There are free accounts everywhere, and you can do a lot for free, but that information is then fed into data banks where others may know that information about you. If you pay for a service, you should have more expectation of privacy.”
As the adage goes, “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.”
One more relevant point: If you plan on asking generative AI the same question often over time — for example, brainstorming ways to diversify your income on a semiannual basis — think about how you can store both the prompts and the results. It doesn’t have to be overly complicated, either. Person does a copy-and-paste of her favorite prompts into a spreadsheet so she can reference them later.
Will the bubble burst?
Generative AI is not without its detractors. Some tech journalists such as Ed Zitron are well known for their lengthy diatribes about how the technology simply is not sustainable in the long term due to how much it costs to operate.
Kovalchuk is a bit more confident that AI has some staying power in some capacity, however.
“Whether the AI bubble pops or not, I think the tech is going to stick around, so it’s better to start using it and benefit from it,” he said. “It will never substitute farmers or agronomists, but the ones who use AI might substitute the ones who don’t.”
10 ways to use AI right now
One good prompt deserves another.
With generative AI, it’s all about brainstorming and exploring what these technologies have to offer. Here are a handful of ideas to get you headed in the right direction:
- Generate scouting task lists for agronomists to help them focus on the highest-risk or highest-value fields.
- Establish benchmarking reports for your fields to guide improvements.
- Create predictive maintenance schedules for your farm equipment.
- Formulate operator training instructions for farm machinery to speed up the onboarding process for your employees.
- Generate farm financial forecasts that test your budget through different scenarios.
- Create pricing strategy scenarios to better manage your margins.
- Automate daily task plans for your team to save time and avoid delays.
- Generate harvest timing recommendations.
- Plan strategically with a multiyear farm development road map.
- Generate animal welfare improvement plans for your livestock.