Sammy Selim strode through the dense, shiny green bushes on the slopes of his coffee farm in Sorwot village in Kericho, Kenya, accompanied by a younger farmer called Kennedy Kirui. They paused at each corner to input the farm's coordinates into a WhatsApp conversation. The conversation was with Virtual Agronomist, a tool that uses artificial intelligence to provide fertiliser application advice using chat prompts. The chatbot asked some further questions before producing a report saying that Selim should target a yield of 7.9 tonnes and use three types of fertiliser in specific quantities to achieve that goal. "My God!" Selim said upon receipt of the report.

Center for A.I. Safety Director Dan Hendrycks explains concerns about how the rapid growth of artificial intelligence could impact society. House lawmakers are urging federal agencies to quickly and aggressively adopt artificial intelligence technology, at a time when the push from civil rights and industry groups for new AI regulations is still waiting to get off the ground. The House Appropriations Committee, led by Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, released several spending bills this week that encourage the government to incorporate AI into everything from national security functions to routine office work to the detection of pests and diseases in crops. Several of those priorities are not just encouraged but would get millions of dollars in new funding under the legislation still being considered by the committee. And while comprehensive AI regulations are likely still months away and are unlikely to be developed this year, lawmakers seem keen on making sure the government is deploying AI where it can. The bills are backed by the GOP majority, and Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., the vice chair of the Congressional Artificial Intelligence Caucus, said agencies shouldn't have to wait to start using AI.

Smart farming using AI and IoT is no longer a distant dream, smart farms are here to stay thanks to amazing advancements in AI and IoT devices. Over the past decades, the agriculture sector has undergone significant changes. Today, it's possible to grow plants even in the most hostile climatic regions. Crops are more resistant to insects, weeds, and climate change than ever before. Lastly, it's possible to breed high-yielding farm animals. But despite all these advancements, a large population of the world is still undernourished.

Banana, a nutritionally-rich, delicious fruit, is a widely-cultivated crop across the world and is a staple diet of people living in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Due to pests and diseases, only 13% of the global production is traded, and often, farmers in India experience severe loss due to fusarium wilt or Panama disease. A novel innovation now aims to change the fortunes of banana growers by helping them detect diseases and pests with their smartphone. In a recent study, researchers from the USA, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Ethiopia and India have developed a banana pest detection app powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Artificial Intelligence is an emerging arena in computer science where machines are programmed to simulate human intelligence and perform tasks like speech recognition, visual perception, language translation and decision-making.

"AI is the broader concept of machines being able to carry out tasks in a way that is considered smart. The smart processes include machines being able to function automatically, reason and learn by themselves," explains Claudia Ayin, an independent ICT consultant. Machine learning is the aspect of AI that allows computers to learn by themselves. "Machine learning is therefore a branch of AI that is able to process large data sets and let machines learn for themselves without having been explicitly programmed," she adds. According to MarketsandMarkets, an Indian research company, in 2018 the worldwide AI in agriculture market was valued at €545 million and, by 2025, is expected to reach €2.4 billion as more and more smallholder farmers adopt new, data-driven technologies.

Machine Learning Digest is a curated weekly news overview for those who are concerned about the Machine Learning development across a spectrum of industries. It provides brief summaries and links to articles and news, describing the most remarkable events in the ML sphere. Banana is the world's most popular fruit and its global population is going to amount to 10 billion in 2050. Banana is a crucial source of nutrition and is an essential fruit for many people. Still, a number of pests and diseases are to damage the plants.

A new smartphone tool developed for banana farmers scans plants for signs of five major diseases and one common pest. In testing in Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Benin, China, and Uganda, the tool provided a 90 percent successful detection rate. This work is a step towards creating a satellite-powered, globally connected network to control disease and pest outbreaks, say the researchers who developed the technology. The findings were published this week in the journal Plant Methods. "Farmers around the world struggle to defend their crops from pests and diseases," said Michael Selvaraj, the lead author, who developed the tool with colleagues from Bioversity International in Africa.

Artificial intelligence-powered tools are rapidly becoming more accessible, including for people in the more remote corners of the globe. This is good news for smallholder farmers, who can use handheld technologies to run their farms more efficiently, linking them to markets, extension workers, satellite images, and climate information. The technology is also becoming a first line of defense against crop diseases and pests that can potentially destroy their harvests. A new smartphone tool developed for banana farmers scans plants for signs of five major diseases and one common pest. In testing in Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Benin, China, and Uganda, the tool provided a 90 percent successful detection rate. This work is a step towards creating a satellite-powered, globally connected network to control disease and pest outbreaks, say the researchers who developed the technology.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly common in electronic devices at home or work, in social media, video streaming services, electronic commerce, and in internet search engines. Now, AI is rapidly entering the farming scene. Growers using modern precision agriculture tools and techniques often face a barrage of high data volumes created by increasingly prolific, data-hungry electronic devices and services. Compare a smart phone's data needs with an old desktop phone. Or contrast an old-style paper map of your farm with today's digital geographic information system maps, showing multiple layers of every square inch of your fields, updated every week or month by automated aerial surveys with drones.