Automation and Decreasing Material Consumption

This playlist of videos and podcasts is a bird’s eye view of AI-based solutions to global overproduction and overconsumption problems. We identified food production as a major area in which big changes need to be made and many projects that have been started offer a creative range of solutions. These range from reforming food farming to be more space and water efficient, identifying household grocery patterns to prevent food waste, and repurposing surplus food items into other consumable products. AI proposes solutions to this problem at every scale — from production to consumption. There are also economic, societal, and business-centred incentives and benefits to adopting more sustainable methods of food production, consumption and distribution.

The Next Wave with Young Sohn — Can AI Save the World’s Food Supply?

Oversupply of food is a global problem and because food is perishable it must be dealt with quickly. In this video, the CEO of SPRK.Global Alexander Piutti talks to Samsung President and Chief Strategy Officer Young Sohn about the work his startup is doing. SPRK.Global has come up with an AI-driven solution. Their mission is to reduce food waste by: a) redistributing food to nonprofits and b) turning produce surplus into new food products that are sold in stores. They use AI to map, predict, and forecast supply patterns to connect oversupply of food to demand for food in an efficient way. We included this video because it highlights one way that AI can be used to reduce food waste by creating a circular supply chain.

Robots run this farm (and save 95% of the water)

In the first episode of the series “Hacking the Apocalypse,” CNET profiles an urban vertical farm that uses only 5% of the water of a normal farm. They use an AI that takes frequent pictures of their plants, makes a judgement on how they’re doing, and adjusts their treatment (water, nutrients, sunlight, etc.) accordingly. By doing so, the farm saves both energy and water (not wasting it on plants that don’t need it) and produces more consistently and efficiently while still saving resources. We included this source because it is a great example of an AI-based solution and provides a nice contrast to a later source that works similarly.

Building a more sustainable food system with AI

This video from The Financial Times describes a number of AI solutions to farming efficiency/sustainability, including: using AI to study a cow’s behavior and milk production so management can increase an individual cow’s milk production; an AI robot that determines when produce is ripe for picking; an AI technology that creates artificial flavors (ex. so you can artificially add meat flavoring to meat alternatives); and AI that sorts produce by ripeness, so it can be packaged into “best by” dates most efficiently. This is a great video with a wide variety of solutions for us to examine.

The Futuristic Farms That Will Feed the World

This video from Freethink describes an innovative farm that is using AI to make farming more efficient. This offers a nice parallel to the earlier video from CNET, which profiled a different farm that used AI in a slightly similar way. This farm in the Netherlands uses AI to produce double the amount of food with 40% less water than open field farming. This technology was developed through collaboration with the federal government, scientists, and the food industry. The resulting AI “allows for an extreme level of control over water, light, temperature, and CO2 — all of which are finely tuned and optimized.” The greenhouse also uses AI to test variables, such as different colors of LED lighting, and on even greater levels, such as building an AI drone that kills moths. This source goes into great depth about the different concurrent applications of AI in agriculture.

Tech Eliminates Food Waste

In this episode of The Peggy Smedley Show, Smedley presents a number of ideas for applying technology and technical solutions to the issue of food waste. One idea she presents is an app that tracks your grocery shopping and eating habits, so when you’re at the grocery store, the app can help guide you to not buy food that you have been proven to waste. Another presented solution is a food-packaging company that uses AI to teach food packaging to eliminate moisture from the environment, thereby keeping the food fresh for longer. This is another source that gives some innovative solutions from both the consumer- and the production-end.

The potential of big data and environmental sustainability

This conversation between Tom Raftery, host of the podcast, and IBM’s Jacob Dencik, Economic Research Leader at the IBM Institute for Business Value, sketches the economic incentive for revolutionizing business models and practices through big data projects. Dencik presents an economic perspective to using AI and data for environmental preservation and highlights how it could be beneficial for large companies to adopt more efficient and beneficial business practices based on learning from data.

Using AI to Reduce Food Waste

In this episode of Computomics: Discussions On Machine Learning Algorithms For Plant Breeding Challenges, Johannes from Colugo and Oliver from the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology discuss the work they have been doing to train an AI to learn whether a plant is more durable or less durable through images. One third of all food is wasted so the goal is to increase the shelf-life of fresh produce. By feeding manually labelled images into the deep learning neural network, the AI can uncover important patterns that may have gone undetected by humans (e.g. leaf patterns indicative of lower quality). Another way in which AI can reduce food waste is through gene-based recognition. This information could then be passed on to plant breeders. We included this source because it highlights two examples of how machine learning can be used to promote sustainable practices towards the beginning of the food production process.

• Kat Chan, Avery Lumeng, Uttkantha Sindhwani