Food Waste Is a Serious Problem. AI Is Trying to Solve It

You're probably familiar with the oft-quoted statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations by now: Globally, about one-third of food is lost or wasted each year from the farm to the refrigerator, representing about 1.3 billion tons. The economic price tag is estimated at nearly $1 trillion annually. The refrain from the FAO goes even further: If we could reverse this trend, we would have enough food to feed the world's undernourished population, as well as help meet the nutritional needs of a planet estimated to reach nearly 10 billion people by 2050. Technology has long been helping to hack world hunger. These days most conversations about tech's impact on any sector of the economy inevitably involves artificial intelligence--sophisticated software that allows machines to make decisions and even predictions in ways similar to humans.