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Next time you pass a farm where a modern tractor is cruising around a field, take a closer look. While there is a farmer sitting in the cab, the vehicle might be driving itself. That tractor is often operating on auto pilot using semi-autonomous, self-driving technology. While the tractor plows along thanks to features like autosteer and computer-assisted technologies for applying fertilizers or pesticides, the farmer can send work texts or emails, pay bills or even flip through Instagram stories or TikTok videos. For farmers, this kind of efficiency is not a luxury.

For years, companies and techno-bros have been saying that self-driving cars are ready to roll. Now companies like the ride-hailing service Lyft are actually letting customers take rides in autonomous vehicles. And at CES this year, John Deere unveiled a self-driving tractor that lets farmers put the latest automation tech to work in the fields. But if the time for self-driving vehicles is finally nigh, what does that mean for the workers who make a living behind the wheel? This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

It's 2022, and developments in the AI industry are off to a slow -- but nonetheless eventful -- start. While the spread of the Omicron variant put a damper on in-person conferences, enterprises aren't letting the pandemic disrupt the course of technological progress. John Deere previewed a tractor that uses AI to find a way to a field on its own and plow the soil without instructions. As Wired's Will Knight point outs, it and -- self-driving tractors like it -- could help to address the growing labor shortage in agriculture; employment of agriculture workers is expected to increase just 1% from 2019 to 2029. But they also raise questions about vendor lock-in and the role of human farmers alongside robots.

LAS VEGAS – CES 2022 lacked its usual crowds and some of its headline acts, but the gadget show that returned to this city after the pandemic forced it to go online-only last year retained a certain exuberant weirdness. You can count on the technology industry to supply more possibilities than the market will necessarily demand. And you can expect many of those to surface at the Arlington, Virginia-based Consumer Technology Association's annual gathering, even if they never make it to any store. The big-name vendors that scrapped plans to exhibit in person over fear of the aggressively-spreading omicron variant still had paid-up show-floor space. That led to such minimalist workarounds as LG's "Life's Good Lounge," an expanse of plywood adorned with QR codes for attendees to scan to get more information about products they could not see or touch.

The massive CES technology show will go on this week in Las Vegas but the annual summit, like many other recent events, is being hindered by COVID-19. The Consumer Technology Association (CTA), which runs the CES, had planned for a hybrid event to run Jan. That's a step forward from last year's CES, which was conducted completely online during the coronavirus shutdown as vaccines were just being deployed. However, in the days leading up to this year's conference some big name exhibitors have bowed out. And some media outlets have canceled plans to cover CES in person.

Self-driving tractors which are powered by hydrogen and controlled by a mobile app could plough the world's farmland under one Italian designer's plans. The remote-controlled Valtra H202 tractors could take to the fields at night with no human supervision from around 2040. Designer Lorenzo Mariotti said the tractor would be charged on site with plugs or wireless inductive charging and said hydrogen could be produced using methane from the farm. The tractor's autonomous driving would allow it to repeat complex and repetitive tasks around the clock, he said. Self-driving tractors which are powered by hydrogen and controlled by a mobile app could plough the world's farmland under one Italian designer's plans Hydrogen fuel cells create electricity to power a battery and motor by mixing hydrogen and oxygen in specially treated plates, which are combined to form the fuel cell stack.

"I don't think Homo sapiens-type people will exist in 10 or 20 years' time," Getnet Assefa, 31, speculates as he gazes into the reconstructed eye sockets of Lucy, one of the oldest and most famous hominid skeletons known, at the National Museum of Ethiopia. "Slowly the biological species will disappear and then we will become a fully synthetic species," Assefa says. "Perception, memory, emotion, intelligence, dreams--everything that we value now--will not be there," he adds. Assefa is a computer scientist, a futurist, and a utopian--but a pragmatic one at that. He is founder and chief executive of iCog, the first artificial intelligence (AI) lab in Ethiopia, and a stone's throw from the home of Lucy. Their desks are cluttered with electronic components and dismembered robot body parts, from a soccer-playing bot called Abebe to a miniature robo-Einstein.

OSAKA – Major Japanese agricultural machinery makers are preparing to launch full-fledged sales of self-driving tractors, possibly in fiscal 2018, which starts April 1. The government plans to support the introduction of self-driving tractors amid growing hopes that such machines will help farmers cope with labor shortages at a time when many are aging and face difficulties finding successors. In June, Kubota Corp. started selling the country's first tractors with autonomous driving functions on a trial basis. Utilizing the Global Positioning System, the tractors can keep tabs on where they are operating. As the machines still need to be monitored, Kubota assumes that farmers will operate two tractors at a time, one with a driver and the other unmanned.