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Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

The weeds discussed in this article, Amaranthus tuberculatus and Amaranthus palmeri, are exactly the kind of plants that early human cultivators would have selected as a seed crop - fast-growing robust plants that could be continually selected for maximal seed size and minimal toxin production generation after generation (which is how crops like maize were developed). Indeed members of this genus were used by Aztecs and others for just that purpose:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaranth_grain

As far as maintaining fields, area spraying of pesticides and herbicides will be replaced with robots wielding lasers and using AI image recognition to catch pest infestations before they take over entire fields.

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Some Amaranthus species are used in India too, as foods. The grains are used to make laddus (sweet balls made by mixing the grains which sugar or jaggery) and the leaves are eaten as cooked greens with spices, masala, onions, etc. Both are quite tasty.

https://www.google.com/search?q=rajgira

I wonder how soon new Amaranth species would evolve since ML models are not 100% precise and genetic mutations of a leaf shape would carry on eventually mimicking useful crops?

It already happens with human vision: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vavilovian_mimicry

> will be replaced with robots wielding lasers

That's a very confident prediction for something that sounds quite unlikely to me.

How about biologically engineered insects/bacteria that destroy weeds and pests? How about pesticides which don't have the downsides of what's currently used?

We're pretty confidently letting AI drive 2 ton metal vehicles on the road, and letting them fly around in the sky with grenades. A farmer-bot with a laser sounds pretty tame to me.

12 years ago: Our Tractor Literally Drives Itself! (GPS Auto Steering Technology) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YStRc1fCj38

It has a guidance system that is connected to a wheel that is friction attached to the steering wheel and turns it on an old tractor. A newer system with an old tractor - https://youtu.be/t0uIYjOds_o

Newer tractors have this built in. The modern tractor cab is a mini data center. https://youtu.be/ZhOvchjeqgM (and you can see that he's not touching the wheel most of the time)

Read the article you are commenting on, these alternatives are mentioned.

Laser wielding AI robots already exist, and are being used commercially.

If you'd like to see a successful one at scale: https://carbonrobotics.com/

Laser-wielding robots are already being successfully deployed to combat weeds at scale on farms across the US.

> How about biologically engineered insects/bacteria that destroy weeds and pests? How about pesticides which don't have the downsides of what's currently used?

Aside from these not currently existing, they also have far worse failure modes than robots with lasers. Introducing species for biological control methods have a long and storied history of becoming a problem as bad as or worse than the original problem.

The article does note that this may similarly cause plants to fight back. Nothing so cool as mirrored weeds, but...

> It’s not just chemicals. Weeds can become resistant to any type of control method. In a classic example from China, a weed called barnyard grass evolved over centuries to resemble rice and thus evade hand weeding.

Weed lasers in Idaho - https://youtu.be/lWTDwj1y9Xg

https://carbonrobotics.com/autonomous-weeder

https://carbonrobotics.com/laserweeder

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