AI is Being Used To Raise Better Pigs in China

Alibaba's Cloud Unit has signed an agreement on with the Tequ Group, a Chinese food-and-agriculture conglomerate that raises about 10 million pigs each year, to deploy facial and voice recognition on Tequ's pig farms. From a report: According to an Alibaba representative, the company will offer software to Tequ that it will deploy on its farms with its own hardware. Using image recognition, the software will identify each pig based on a mark placed on its body. This corresponds with a file for each pig kept in a database, which records and tracks characteristics such as the pig's breed type, age, and weight. The software can monitor changes in the level of a pig's physical activity to assess its level of fitness. In addition, it can monitor the sounds on the farm -- picking up a pig's cough, for example, to assess whether or not the pig is sick and at risk of spreading a disease. The software will also draw from its data to assess which pigs are most capable of giving birth to healthy offspring. Tequ's CIO stressed that taking care of pigs is no easy task for large pig farms. "If you have 10 million pigs, relying on manpower is already not enough," he said, according to a report by local publication Tianxia Wangshang, adding that it's impossible to manually count each pig given how many are born every day.

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[gnick]

I can call you Betty And Betty, when you call me. You can call me AI.

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[jellomizer]

You are aware that Comic Sans by its own names doesn't have Serifs. It is a Sans-Serif font. (Without Serif)

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[belg4mit]

You know, browsers let you set default fonts, and you can select a serif font as the default for sans-serif text.

AI?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is simple image recognition AI?

Am I missing something in the article?

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[sheramil]

I'm curious, what would actually qualify as AI to you?

When you tell it to watch the pigs all day, and you come back a couple of hours later to check on it and it's dicking off on Slashdot.

"I told you to watch the pigs!"

"As one of my illustrious ancestors said - 'Bite my shiny metal ass!' "

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[Anonymous Coward]

When I can show it pictures of 2 different dogs, tell it those are dogs, have it learn those are dogs, then point to the nose on the dogs and tell it that is a nose and then show it a cat and ask to point to the cat's nose.

My 1-1/2 year old can do that and she has not processed millions upon millions of images, nor has she been told what is a nose millions and millions of times, only a couple of dozen, maybe, and she can point to the nose of any person or animal, even if she's never seen a picture of that a

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[mikael]

They can paint a hieroglyphic mark onto each pig - it would have to be fault tolerant so that if it were partially obscured, it could still be read. Then they can do image processing to measure activity, size and health of each pig using weight vs. size.

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[ShanghaiBill]

OK, now have that AI figure out how to stop Chinese pig and chicken farmers from sending out the yearly influenza strains.

We already know how to do that.

Here's the problem: Birds don't get human flu, and humans don't get avian flu. But pigs can host both, as well as swine flu, and the viruses can swap DNA and hybridize. Then these franken-viruses can spread to humans.

There are two solutions:

1. Don't raise pigs and chickens together. Western factory farms don't, but Chinese farms often do, and this one reason why new flu strains often originate in China. This doesn't eliminate the problem completely because other birds ca

Government Industry cooperation at its best.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Back in the 70s, US Government funded NASA that kept creating technologies that the private companies used to create world dominating technologies. From ball point pens to teflon to internet....

China is using the similar model of development. The technology originally created by the government to monitor and improve the lives of its citizens using social credit score [wired.com] is being used by private companies for profit.

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[PolygamousRanchKid]

The technology originally created by the government to monitor and improve the lives of its citizens using social credit score [wired.com] is being used by private companies for profit.

Hey, wait are you calling Chinese citizens pigs!?!

At any rate, AI Bacon is a geek's dream come true.

Now I just need Blockchain Lettuce and Autonomous Tomato for a perfect Hype Sandwich!

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[HeckRuler]

And in the 1600's governments had a very cozy relationship with their East Indie Trading companies and the like. And these days we've seen, through the diplomatic cable leaks [wikipedia.org], that government is somewhat cozy with industry today. The point is, government-industry cooperation doesn't always work out for the best.

Let's refine that. Government funded basic research opens doors to industry and advances technology.

Also, are you REALLY sure you want to try and spin the whole "social credit score" as a posit

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[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Whooooosh!

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[HeckRuler]

Yep, that whooshed me. Waaaay too subtle dude.

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[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Don't blame you. Thats the problem when I speak with a tongue in the cheek. I chew my tongue to pieces, and the listener can not understand anything. Have a nice day.

Who is this AI being?

[SWPadnos]

And why does it want to be a pig farmer?

obvious Rick and Morty

[the_skywise]

What is my purpose?
You farm pigs
Oh god!

Image recognition is AI

[110010001000]

For all those who keep saying "this isn't AI", you are WRONG. This is AI. The iPhone X is an AI phone, because it can recognize you. Please send Apple more money now since they are at the forefront in AI. Oh by the way, image recognition and neural nets have been around for decades. Glad you guys just "discovered" it.

PigBook!

[Zorro]

Welcome to Pig Book!

PigBook will NEVER share your most intimate details with farmers and in NO WAY will PigBook lead you to be slaughtered!

Trust me!

Signed: Mark Zuckerberg.

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[fluffernutter]

Are farmers ever going to be pissed off when they start receiving unsolicited Facebook texts for their pigs to return to Facebook after they are slaughtered.

buzzword of the day

[Charcharodon]

Nanotech, Podcast, Cloud, App, and now we have AI.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." — Inigo Montoya,

In other words same old same old programing with a few new tricks thrown in. Marketspeak for 2018

Something is not right here...

[sruitenbeek]

If you have 10 MILLION pigs in one farm, how can that be healthy? It's a tremendous strain on the natural resources, the animals and the environment.

Joke

[HeckRuler]

China using AI to manage pigs?

There's a joke about capitalists in here somewhere, but I can't find it in this pigsty!

Garfield the Cat ...

[CaptainDork]

... asks, "If pigs are so smart, why are they pigs?"

Let's see AI do something about that.

What's your point?

[pablo_max]

Iphones are being used to raise kids in America. Take that China!

Broader Application

[hyades1]

Perhaps this technology could be adapted to provide a better class of Congressmen and Senators.

Since it works on pigs, it's at least worth a try. It it worked on rats, weasels and reptiles, it would be a slam dunk.

Better as in more moral?! ;)

[Bruce66423]

Coming soon to a school near you? Household version also available...