Since the industrial revolution, technological development has been linked to an improvement of agricultural techniques, resulting in an increase in the global food supply. Now, the idea of farms being run by robots and smart machinery is closer than ever. However, that progress could be hampered by the actions of hackers.
A new risk analysis done by the University of Cambridge, published in Nature Machine Intelligence, warns that the future use of artificial intelligence in agriculture comes with substantial potential risks for farms, farmers and food security that are at present poorly understood and underappreciated.
“The idea of intelligent machines running farms is not science fiction,” said Dr Asaf Tzachor, a researcher behind the study, “but so far no one seems to have asked the question: ‘Are there any risks associated with a rapid deployment of agricultural AI?’”
The paper suggests that hackers could exploit flaws in agricultural hardware used...