Alibaba and JD want to clean up the dirty business of pig farms in China–with AI – KrASIA

The scene in your mind's eye is likely set in a rural area with farmhands doing back-breaking work. Hundreds of pigs are raised together, perhaps in a cramped space: they eat, they sleep, they play, they breed; and when the time comes, they are sent to the slaughterhouse by the truckload. But the nature of pig farms is changing in China. Some of the country's biggest names in the tech industry–Alibaba, JD–are lining up to become disruptors of this traditional business. In late 2017, Laozhang's family pig farm in a Beijing suburb received an unusual group of visitors--20 engineers from JD Finance's artificial intelligence (AI) department.