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Deere Rolls Out Self-Driving Tractors; Employers Seek Recruiting Help
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Welcome back. There are few more iconic images of Americana than a farmer sitting atop a tractor working the soil. But like so many other areas of life, artificial intelligence is poised to recast that image, leaving only the fields and the tractor.
At last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, farm-equipment maker Deere & Co. unveiled its first full autonomous tractor designed for large-scale commercial farming operations.
While smaller driverless tractors have been around for a few years, bigger farms continue to keep a farmer in the driver seat. Deere said its self-driving model will be available later this year.
Switching gears from tractors to tractor-trailers, trucking companies are also leveraging AI. But rather than replacing drivers, they’re using advanced conversational AI platforms to automate recruiting efforts and put as many truckers behind the wheel as they can find–at a time when demand is soaring and qualified drivers are scarce.
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Deere said its fully autonomous tractor, a version of its existing 8R series machine, is designed for large-scale farming. PHOTO: JOHN DEERE
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Field-Tested Robot Tractors
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Deere & Co. said last week that it has developed a fully autonomous tractor designed for large-scale farming and that it plans to sell the machine later this year, WSJ’s John McCormick reports.
How it works. The tractor’s driving system is equipped with cameras that provide a 360-degree view of the surrounding areas, feeding images into an onboard computer neural network that determines whether the tractor should remain on course, steer around an obstacle, or stop.
New but familiar. The tractor is a version of Deere’s existing 8R series with their familiar green hue, a steering wheel and massive tires around classic yellow wheels, as well as redundant braking and steering systems for an added layer of safety.
Record yields. Investors put a record $1.54 billion into AI agriculture software companies last year, up from $1.42 billion in 2020, according to PitchBook Data Inc.
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Help Needed To Keep On Trucking
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A chronic shortage of workers has more employers turning to artificial intelligence to supercharge recruiting efforts, seeking an edge in an increasingly pitched battle to fill job openings, The Wall Street Journal reports.
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PHOTO: U.S. XPRESS ENTERPRISES INC.
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What AI can do. By automating previously manual tasks—like pre-screening job applicants for basic qualifications, checking for professional credentials and licenses, or scheduling follow-up interviews—employers hope to streamline the hiring process and scoop up available workers before competitors move in.
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Faster response. Trucking company U.S. Xpress Enterprises Inc. uses conversational AI software to handle most of the early stages of the hiring process, including text exchanges with job applicants, in part by instantly replying to online job applications with a series of preliminary questions.
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The horsepower of John Deere’s largest autonomous tractor for full-scale commercial operations.
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Wreckage of an armed drone brought down near an air base housing U.S. troops in Iraq last week. PHOTO: INTERNATIONAL COALITION/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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New Battlefield Foe: Cheap Hobbyist Drones
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The U.S. army is rapidly developing defenses against inexpensive unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, which enable irregular forces, terrorist groups and national armies to attack high-value targets at low cost, The Wall Street Journal reports.
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Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie says small, cheap drones are a new tactical threat. PHOTO: OLIVIER DOULIER/REUTERS
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Aerial attack. Insurgent groups such as Islamic State and Yemen’s Houthi rebels have rigged commercial, off-the-shelf drones with explosives to attack expensive armored vehicles and military installations as well as oil refineries, ports and civilian airports.
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Coming in swarms. Armed drones last week were brought down at the Baghdad airport, near an air base in Iraq hosting U.S. troops, and near a separate Iraqi base.
Space-age weapons. The U.S. has fielded a variety of systems across the armed services, from hand-held signal jammers that look like a prop from Ghostbusters or Star Wars to laser shooters mounted on trucks.
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The LG CLOi ServeBot from LG Electronics can be programmed for a variety of floor plans. PHOTO: LG ELECTRONICS INC.
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Tech companies at the annual Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas showcased a number of AI-powered products and services aimed at business customers, WSJ Pro AI reports. Here’s a sampling of what they unveiled:
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LG Electronics’ office bot. LG Electronics Inc. demonstrated an autonomous robot, dubbed The LG CLOi ServeBot, designed to operate in restaurants and offices by using floor plans and sensors to navigate around tables, desks and other obstacles.
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Qualcomm’s vision for self-driving cars. Qualcomm Technologies Inc. unveiled new computer-vision software for autonomous driving that uses advanced chips that give onboard computers a clearer view of their surroundings.
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IBM weather analytics on AWS. International Business Machines Corp. said weather-data analytics from its Weather Company and IBM Watson Advertising units will be available on Amazon Web Services’ AWS Data Exchange, a cloud service that offers data from news organizations, financial-data companies and other third-party sources.
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“Right now you can go out and buy one at Walmart or some other location, you can weaponize it very readily.”
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— Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, on the growing use of armed drones.
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Qraft’s CEO, Marcus Hyung-Sik Kim, center, at the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange in June 2019.
PHOTO: COURTNEY CROW/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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SoftBank invests in AI startup. SoftBank Group Corp. says it is investing $146 million in Qraft Technologies Inc., a Seoul-based startup whose platform mines market data for promising stocks, to gain access to the money manager’s AI tools and fuel plans to expand in Chinese markets. (The Wall Street Journal)
Tesla to raise price of self-driving software. Elon Musk, Tesla Inc.’s chief executive officer, said Friday that the electric carmaker is raising the U.S. price of its driver assistant software, dubbed Full Self Driving, by 20% to $12,000, with the increase slated for early next week. (Reuters)
Take my WiFi, please. A researcher at Oregon State University’s School of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering has developed an AI-powered android designed to perform standup comedy with an ability to “read the room” by detecting if a joke went over well or bombed. (Time Magazine)
Software seen as outpacing ethics. Among other findings, a recent University of Tokyo survey on attitudes towards AI found many people feel its development is outrunning the need for regulations, laws and ethical guidelines, though attitudes varied by democraphics. (SciTechDaily)
Smart transport is more than AV, official says. Jennie Martin, secretary general of the U.K.’s Intelligent Transport Systems agency, says AI has a lot more to offer than autonomous city busses and other vehicles, citing improved smartcards, contactless ticketing and software-driven timetable planning (Intelligent Transport)
WEF survey finds mixed feelings on AI. In a recent 28-country survey conducted by Ipsos for the World Economic Forum of nearly 20,000 adults under the age of 75, 60% said they believe that products and services using AI will make their life easier, while 40% felt they use of AI makes them nervous. (Modern Diplomacy)
Albert Einstein, teaching assistant. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab researchers, in collaboration with teams at the University of California at Santa Barbara and Osaka University, have developed easy-to-use AI software designed to enable teachers and students to create lifelike videos of historical figures for learning purposes, such as reviving Albert Einstein to teach a physics class. (MIT News)
Radiology startup hits unicorn status. Fractal, the New York AI startup behind radiology software tool Qure.ai, raised $360 million in its latest fundraising round, lifting its valuation to more than $1 billion, the company announced last week. (Radiology Business)
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Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. agreed to buy Zynga Inc. in a roughly $11 billion deal as the maker of Grand Theft Auto looks to expand its mobile portfolio with hits like Words With Friends and FarmVille. (The Wall Street Journal)
Microsoft Corp.’s augmented-reality team has lost around 100 people in the past year, many of them to Meta Platforms Inc.'s Facebook, said former employees of the software company and online job profiles, as the battle heats up for workers with skills to build the metaverse. (The Wall Street Journal)
The chief operating officer of electric-truck startup Rivian Automotive Inc. left the company last month as the company was ramping up production of its first three models. (The Wall Street Journal)
Intel Corp. removed references to the Chinese region of Xinjiang from an open letter it sent suppliers last month, after the contents of the note sparked a social-media uproar in China and led the U.S. semiconductor company to apologize to the Chinese public. (The Wall Street Journal)
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