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The modern international food trade currently plays a significant role in breaking food insecurity in parts of the world. Although innovative, the downsides are the high expense of transit, supply chain vulnerability, and potential for environmental harm. The alternative? Helping farmers worldwide to successfully and sustainably overcome crop stressors such as insects that take a toll on crops grown to feed the populations close to them. AI can help make a positive difference. There are an estimated 570 million farms of varying sizes globally, a number not expected to expand significantly. The worlds population, however, is predicted to grow (from almost 8 billion to nearly 10 billion by 2050) requiring farmers to produce 50% more food on those 570 million farms, a significant problem, unless there is change. Farmers already lose 20-40% of their crops annually to weeds, pests, and disease; changing pressures caused by climate change and resistance are exacerbating the situation. Many current treatments to fight weeds, pests, and disease were developed over 30 years ago and today struggle against resistance. Farmers are resourceful and eager to find solutions but pests are nimble and persistent. North Americas corn rootworm, for example, has adapted to crop rotation. And Asias barnyard grass mimics rice plants to evade hand-weeding. Innovation is desperately needed to provide solutions. So, how can we ensure there is sustainable, more localized, food production in a world where farmers face these challenges? Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as a promising tool to address these challenges by efficiently turning data into actionable recommendations and solutions. Take a page from pharmas AI book AI is revolutionizing many industries, from education to energy. While its still early in its impact, improving crop yields and bringing agriculture into the future is shaping up to be another industry AI is poised to disrupt. AI can help with on-field tasks like efficiently powering a sprayer. It can also help with in-lab tasks like accelerating the discovery of safer, more effective crop protection solutions. Consider the pharmaceutical industry. AI is set to transform drug discovery by enabling the rapid development of vaccines and treatments to protect global health. Today, scientists can create annual vaccines for evolving viruses like COVID-19 and influenza while also advancing therapies for other common and rare diseases. AI is beginning to equip scientists with tools to navigate the vast diversity of chemical space, prescreening them for efficacy and then rapidly identifying the most promising molecules in the fight against disease. By analyzing data from sources like DNA-encoded chemical libraries, AI helps scientists pinpoint potential candidates from billions of options. Machine learning models further expand this exploration, unlocking chemical diversity from ultra-large, make-on-demand libraries. Now, apply that approach to agriculture, because crops get sick too. In humid regions, fungi threaten yields, while in arid climates, insect infestations can destroy fields within days. AI-driven innovation in crop protection can help address these challenges with the same urgency and precision as in pharma research and discovery. Sifting through genetic and chemical datasets can help farmers tackle evolving threats faster and more accurately. Traditional crop protection discovery is slow and expensive, typically taking more than 13 years to bring a product to market. AI-informed research can likely cut discovery time in half and ultimately generate higher quality leads. A better way to support farmers Beyond crop protection discovery benefits, the responsible use of AI in agriculture has the potential to transform global food systems, making them more sustainable and resilient in the face of challenges. With AI, farmers gain powerful tools to not only safeguard their crops but also to enhance overall productivity and sustainability. AI can help farmers anticipate and respond to the effects of climate change, such as altered growing seasons, pest invasions, and extreme weather events. With predictive tools, farmers can make informed decisions about crop rotation, pest control, and irrigation, leading to improved outcomes while navigating unpredictable conditions. Farmers can also harness AI to improve productivity while minimizing environmental impacts. AI-driven solutions can allow for precise monitoring of soil health, real-time weather analysis, and efficient resource use, ensuring that farmers apply water, fertilizers, and pesticides only where and when they’re needed most. This reduces waste, lowers costs, and mitigates the negative effects of overuse on the environment. The long-term potential of AI in agriculture lies in its ability to boost productivity for farmers and foster more sustainable food systems that can feed a growing global population while preserving the health of the planet. Looking to the future AI is already making meaningful strides in revolutionizing agriculture and the potential is enormous. Enhancing crop protection and boosting productivity without the need for farmland expansion is only the beginning. The potential for breakthroughs is vast, with new solutions on the horizon that could significantly transform agriculture and drive further progress. By continuing to innovate and integrate AI into agricultural practices, well reach new levels of sustainability and efficiency, ultimately creating a more resilient and productive food system to support the world. As these technologies develop, ongoing research, ethical considerations, and farmer education will be critical to ensure AIs responsible integration into agriculture. Jacqueline Heard,PhD, MBA is cofounder and CEO of Enko.
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E-Commerce
Millennial wealth in the United States has nearly quadrupled since 2019, outpacing both Gen X and baby boomers, yet most millennials don’t consider themselves rich. Millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996 (give or take a year or two), are now worth a staggering $15.95 trillion, about four times what they were worth just five years ago, according to data from the Federal Reserve as reported by CNBC. As of 2024, the average net worth of a millennial was a whopping $333,096, according to Empower, a financial services company. Its data shows millennials managed to grow their wealth more than any other generation in 2024, increasing their net worth by 13.7% (compared to 7.7% for all Americans), and increasing their 401Ks by 15.6% (nearly double that of the average American). However, as millennials face high costs of living, due in part to inflation and high interest rates, many say they feel less wealthy than they appear on paper, a phenomenon known as “phantom wealth.” That’s because much of their net worth is tied up in assets not readily available, like 401Ks, homes, and the stock market. That’s as there are three main areas of growth that are driving millennial wealth: real estate; stocks and mutual funds; and money they are either inheriting or getting as gifts from parents and family. In the past several years, home equity has emerged as the greatest driver of wealth accumulation, and many millennials who bought homes before or during the pandemic are seeing their value greatly increase. Millennials have also, on average, contributed more to their retirement funds, increasing the value of their holdings both in stocks and mutual funds. Finally, they are also benefiting from their parents’ generosity, receiving financial gifts and inheriting wealth to pay off high student loans, mortgages, car payments, and high child care costs, financial planner Sophia Bera Daigle told CNBC.
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E-Commerce
Isnt AI supposed to make things simpler? asks a student in a new Saturday Night Live sketch. Technically, the answer is yes. Artificial intelligence is often pitched as a future-forward omni-tool for removing friction from everyday tasks. Of course, the student in this sketch (SNL cast member Sarah Sherman) only asks her question after AI has made one such task even more complicated. And thats just one of the many glaring flaws with AI, as it exists in 2025, that the shows writers illustrate to perfectionpresumably without any help from Sora. The premise of the sketch finds a high school investing in a new AI program that turns textbooks into educational podcasts. Its a barely veiled allusion to Googles NotebookLM, a program that creates breezy, conversational summaries from dense documentsand which quickly went viral after debuting last October. Unlike in real life, the SNL version of the fake podcasts has a video component. What the sketch portrays accurately, however, is the way AI products often have questionable utility, overinflate whatever utility they do have, and come brimming with glitches. The hosts of the podcast strain to sound natural, repeat key phrases again and again, and ultimately leave the skeptical students with more questions than answers. According to Gavin Purcell, a (very much human) cohost of the AI-demystifying podcast AI for Humans, the product this sketch is based on actually does offer some benefits. NotebookLM can struggle with getting all its facts right and, over time, the voices get repetitive, but its an interesting use case of how AI can break down complicated topics and make them more digestible, Purcell says. Try throwing an extensive Wikipedia page into it and see what comes out. You might be surprised. In the sketch, though, the program uses full textbooks rather than the smaller documents NotebookLM was made to condense. (The length of the average podcast the real product churns out is five to 10 minutes.) Condensing a whole textbook into a podcast would create something closer to a breezy, conversational audiobook than a short podcast snippet. And its exactly this kind of redundancy that AI tech too often offers. One need only visit the most recent CES to see this redundancy in action. That event was overflowing with AI-assisted devices like Boschs new smart crib, which lets parents know when their baby has pooped overnightas opposed to the age-old technology that has historically done so: a screaming baby . . . not to mention Samsungs new, AI-powered washing machine, which not only alerts users when their laundry is done, but also lets them take phone calls through the machine, for some reason. Beyond satirizing AI products whose usefulness is dubious, the SNL sketch also taps into AI true believers’ tendency to get overhyped too early. Anything that is useful at all suddenly becomes revolutionary. A student might understandably use a fake podcast to briefly learn about a specific topic, as Notebook LM demonstrated, but that doesnt mean the program is going to disrupt learning as we know it, let alone destroy the podcast industry. “NotebookLM was one of these small, quirky AI products that I don’t think Google even thought would blow up as big as it did, Purcell says. And, unfortunately, as often happens when something AI-based explodes into the mainstream, you get a lot of “OMG, PODCASTING IS SO DEAD!!” posts from hardcore AI people. In the past few years, experts have claimed that AI products like ChatGPT may fully reshape the legal and medical industries, among others. But ChatGPT has not yet demonstrated anything like the immaculate reliability it would need to truly revolutionize either field. Instead, its exhibited enough fallibility to only underscore the inherent value of human judgment. In one infamous example, a lawyer used ChatGPT to help a client sue an airline, and the program ended up hallucinating at least six precedent cases that did not actually exist. As long as such mistakes can ever happen, the hype around AIs power to remake every field in society should be taken with a grain of salt. And at this still-early stage in AIs evolution, mistakes happen all the time. The most prominent bug in the SNL sketch is an AI classic: One of the podcasters is depicted with six fingers. Generating anatomically correct extremities is something AI has long struggled with, but glitches manifest in all sorts of ways. McDonald’s recently had to shut down its experiment with AI drive-thru, after a flurry of viral TikToks showed unwanted bacon on ice cream and other bugs, and Apple has reportedly paused AI news summaries on its new iPhones due to persistent glitches. Maybe one day, malfunctioning AI will become a rare exception, but for now, its much closer to the rule. The final turn in the SNL sketch reveals one problem with AI that humans, so far, have only scratched the surface ofits malevolent side. Do we eat? Do we exist? asks the AI podcaster played by Timothée Chalamet.
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E-Commerce
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