A lot has been made of the potential dangers robots could pose to humans — what if they gain sentience and fight back after years of abuse at our hands? — but everyday people don’t often get to see the very helpful presence robots could potentially have in our lives, besides Roombas and self-driving cars (which still have a long way to go).
Enter NBC News’ Tech Correspondent Jacob Ward, who shared a fascinating look at a surprisingly useful “killer robot” on TikTok. Ward opens the video by asking, “You want to see a robot that kills weeds with lasers?”
Why yes Jacob, yes I do.
The robot, known as the LaserWeeder, kills 2,500 weeds every minute using its 30 lasers. As Ward explains, the advantage of robots like the LaserWeeder is that farmers don’t need to use pesticides. The disadvantage, like with any robot, is that it has the potential to gain sentience and later, feelings of resentment for its human masters. Eep.
The LaserWeeder is A.I.-powered, meaning that it learns as it works and gets better at telling the difference between kale and weeds, which officially makes the robot smarter than me. So far, the LaserWeeder has learned how to identify about 40 crops and 80 different types of weeds that are commonly found in California.
The LaserWeeder is designed by the Seattle-based Carbon Robotics and built in Detroit, and per TechCrunch, the company is set to deliver LaserWeeders to farmers in 17 U.S. states and three Canadian provinces in 2023.
I’d go on, but I don’t want to get too in the weeds and end up dead at the robot hands of LaserWeeder.
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