Farming stands as a real beneficiary of AI developments & applications

On 8 April 2019, the European Commission welcomed the final publication of the Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence click here prepared by the High-Level Group on Artificial Intelligence.

Farmers are eager for knowledge in order to address a number of pressing problems, such as the growing global competition and the ever more stringent sustainability goals. Artificial intelligence, field sensors, and data analytics are some of the advanced systems used in that endeavour and they are seen as one of the key trends that will deeply influence agriculture in 2019.

Farming can be one of the sectors where Artificial Intelligence can make a difference. For instance more flexible and faster pattern recognition in image processing could be really useful, on early disease detection. But it could also be used as support in decision making or in robotics to speed up the learning process.

That is why CEMA warmly welcomes the development of common Ethical Guidelines on AI at EU level. This document sets the first stone to build trust and increase acceptance of these new technologies in manufacturing but also in day-to-day applications.  

The Guidelines set seven key requirements that AI systems should meet in order to be trustworthy:

  • Human agency and oversight
  • Technical robustness and safety
  • Privacy and Data governance
  • Transparency
  • Diversity, non-discrimination and fairness
  • Societal and environmental well-being
  • Accountability

The Guidelines also provide an assessment list to support the practical implementation of each requirement. This assessment list will now be subject to a piloting process to evaluate and improve if necessary.

Next steps: A platform is set-up to exchange good practice on the implementation of trustworthy AI. The Commission will also bring the Union’s human-centric approach to the global stage, building an international consensus on AI ethics guidelines.

This High-Level AI Expert Group, comprising 52 representatives from academia, civil society, as well as industry, will continue to serve as the steering group for the European AI Alliance's work, interact with other initiatives, help stimulate a multi-stakeholder dialogue, gather participants' views and reflect them in its analysis and reports.