Draft 3

 Title: Artificial Intelligence, Robots

According to an article titled 'How Artificial Intelligence, Robots Enhance Forest Sustainability in Finland' by Scott McQueen (2019), wrote that the majority of the forests maintenance tasks in Finland’s forests are being performed by robots. Mcqueen mentioned that this ambitious idea came about by the forestry experts, the Finnish Forest Centre who is in charge of overseeing this massive area for Finland's forest, which covers three-quarters of the country's landscape. Manual harvesting is definitely inefficient in the long run to meet up with demands and with the lack of manpower. There is a depletion lack of interest in forestry jobs due to the job being time-consuming and pretty dull since it is a lonely job. According to Mcqueen, the data used has to be precise and attainable before the Finnish Forest Centre can train the robots. They use aerial and lidar imagery to construct forest inventories, record tree measurements, and species information. All the data required by the robot is then placed in a geographic information system (GIS). The development director of the Finnish Forest Centre, Hamalainen, and his team see robots bringing benefits. Mcqueen stated that People owning more than 65% of Finland’s forests can have simpler and more proactive management of their forests. To produce precise data and decrease the amount of work in the field, the Finnish Forest Centre is using AI. Mcqueen mentioned that by combining the data from GIS, imagery sources, climate and weather datasets, precise measurements of the forest can be obtained, and improve forest inventory predictions. It can also detect signs of spruce bark beetle attacks. Through AI, Hamalainen states that “we want the data to be so accurate that users can see and sell without having to go to the forest”. Currently, 85% of the cases have reliable data, while the remaining 15% is being improved. Mcqueen stated that the machine testing algorithms are being tested to extract the same measurements that were previously required in-person inspection crews. AI can also provide the relevant information of the volume and species of wood without being present on the land which is costly and time-consuming. Mcqueen concluded that robots are efficient in maintaining the forest-agriculture in the long run without the need to depend on manpower.

Artificial Intelligence, robots have indisputably empowered our world, their presence has made things more efficient and effective by contributing towards the workforce, agriculture and in schools. Robots have slowly immersed themselves in our lives.

One of the areas that AI had benefitted is the workforce. West expressed his feelings and emphasized how surprised he was when he found out that his personal assistant was an AI robot. It was impressive according to West because her performance was exemplary, extremely fast and efficient. This was because of the prompt follows up in rescheduling tasks immediately after being assigned. According to West, her tasks included reading emails, discerning intent and responding to relevant issues. Unlike humans, a robot is definitely focused, effective and efficient as it does not get distracted by other tasks. Robots can function 24hours and can perform beyond working hours. West mentioned that robots are " increasing in sophistication and dropping in price", which also explains why robots are attractive to employers. West concluded that AI robots are effective, efficient and are very attractive in the workforce.

AI had also impacted the agriculture sector. According to Philipp, as the World's Population escalates, the demand for food and resources increases. The Plant Classification Robots have also empowered our world. Robots have dominated the agricultural sector by making the agricultural system more efficient and effective. It can reduce the ecological footprint of agricultural production to achieve sustainability. Philipp mentioned that the system uses robots that can distinguish and locate the plants and weeds in the field and trigger the actuators to perform the treatment selectively without destroying the rest of the plant. These plant classification systems will enable agricultural ground robots for online in-field interventions and for aerial robots to perform accurate monitoring of the plantation on a large scale which will overcome the problem of manpower shortage and increase crop yield in a shorter period. Philipp concluded that AI is effective in meeting up demands in the agriculture sector.

AI has been introduced in schools and included in the curriculum. In Programming the mBot Robot in School, Mester made a very strong statement about how working with robots impact the student. Mester stated that “ Working with the mentioned robot develops imagination and creativity, decision-making skills, logical thinking, connecting different knowledge, also improves designing skills and empower children in different levels so they can improve their 21st-century life skills ”. This explains that robots are a significant tool in educating the students or allowing them to explore the creativity within themselves. Mester also shared a few examples of AI applications software such as 'Scratch' which allows the users to create projects using the block-like interface, and 'mBlock' which has similar functions to 'Scratch' with additional interact functions with hardware. These are common engineering software used that is relevant to the current industry. This proves that AI is taking over the industry as this knowledge are included in curriculums. Mester concluded that AI is an efficient and effective way of educating the students by letting them explore and work on the robots.

AI, Robots are portrayed as effective, efficient and slowly overtaking our daily tasks, making a positive and huge impact in our lives. However, there are cons and negative impacts. According to Leduc and Liu, with the presence of robots dominating human tasks, people may slowly feel the loss of meaning to life since they lose their jobs to robots as they need to compete. From an article ‘Are Workers losing to Robots?’, Leduc and Liu mentioned “The steady decline in the relative prices of robots and automation equipment over the past few decades have made it increasingly profitable to automate”. This shows that employees would rather invest in robots or automation rather than in manpower. Leduc and Lie stated that "Although automation boosts labour productivity, the productivity gains do not fully translate into wage gains". This proves that although it seemed effective, the profit or outcome is pretty much similar, which in fact, in a long run, AI robots will get worn out and maintenance can be costly. Hence, Leduc and Lie concluded that robots are becoming more relevant to the employees resulting in higher chances of employees losing their jobs.

With all these, I conclude, humans should expand their knowledge so as to compete with their intelligence otherwise robots would overtake the world, and humans can be redundant. However, I do not refute the fact that robot helps increase efficiency and effectiveness in every aspect.

References:

Darell M. West. (2018).The Future of Work: Robots, AI, and Automation (2nd ed.). https://books.google.com.sg/books?hl=en&lr=&id=PeY2DwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=robots+and+automation&ots=m1fpP_hiRP&sig=hGF380ouR3aRbT803kdQ2TNIm64&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=robots%20and%20automation&f=false

Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. (2019, October). Are workers losing to Robots? Sylvain Leduc and Zheng Liu. https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/el2019-25.

Gyula Mester. (2019, December). Programming the mBot Robot in School. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gyula-Mester/publication/337926235_Programming_the_mBot_Robot_in_School/links/5df661dea6fdcc28372455e3/Programming-the-mBot-Robot-in-School.pdf

Lottes, Philipp. (2021, March). Plant Classification Systems for Agricultural Robots (No. 1). https://bonndoc.ulb.uni-bonn.de/xmlui/handle/20.500.11811/8981