To be honest, some applications of artificial intelligence can be mind-boggling and in fact, the technology is luring businesses into taking unimaginable ventures. For the longest time, Alibaba has maintained the position of being China's leading e-commerce firm.

Provided by Quartz Pigs are seen on a family farm in Xiaoxinzhuang village, Hebei province Alibaba is best known-as China's largest e-commerce company, but it's lately made forays into artificial intelligence and cloud computing. Through a program it calls ET Brain, it's using AI to improve traffic and city planning, increase airport efficiency, and diagnose illness. The company's latest AI foray is taking place among pigs. Alibaba's Cloud Unit signed an agreement on Feb. 6 with the Tequ Group, a Chinese food-and-agriculture conglomerate that raises about 10 million pigs each year (link in Chinese), to deploy facial and voice recognition on Tequ's pig farms. According to an Alibaba representative, the company will offer software to Tequ that it will deploy on its farms with its own hardware.