Ergo, you can count on JD not going out of business any time soon. "Too big to fail" and all that. JD's master plan has now come to fruition.
My hometown used to make a sizable chunk of the US's fasteners, and there was real concern during the Cold War that dropping a single bomb on it could cripple the entire nation's industrial capacity. Here, it seems like there may be an unacceptable strategic risk that a bomb dropped on Moline, Illinois could cripple the entire nation's food production capacity.
My father owns a John Deere, kind of old, and it is a good machine. It is not that sophisticated, and all the electronics we use are bought separately. We do not have this kind of problem yet.
The convenience and added benefit of a self-guided, GPS/RTK oriented tractor has this annoying cost. John Deere wants a share of what farmers save with more efficient machines, and then some more.
In which case you still won't be locked out of your machine, in the sense that you can choose the company with the best farming AI.
The only way for a quick automation scenario is to make crops a lot more predictable. In our days, this means linearly sown and harvested, artifact free crops.
If we choose a more hands-on approach to farming (and food production in general for that matter), then automation ceases to be as interesting.
We can't even get interop between instant messaging platforms, and video calling platforms. Why would we anticipate that companies manufacturing $200,000+ pieces of equipment are going to work together when they have the option of lock-in?
I would never do that, unless I was actually renting the land. Some people do rent their land, and perhaps committing to such a contract could make sense to them.
The alternative is to simply buy a tractor and then hire someone that does many other things, like driving other tractors, cleaning them and do some repairs and maintenance. (If I could do that to my own AI-powered tractor, maybe then I would buy one). This is about who controls your business.
I believe there's future in modularity, but I also believe some kinds of equipment won't fall into the automation ratchet or the "evolve to AI or die" category.
If you are developing an AI sophisticated enough to pilot a tractor, would it only be able to drive one model? If John Deere ever achieved this goal, the AI should be adaptable to other brands as well.
Car manufacturers are doing this already with Android. They do not develop the OS, they simple accommodate their cars for it.
I have a working GPS system that belonged to my father's John Deere tractor. I cannot use it anymore, even in other John Deere tractors. This is wasteful and makes no sense. People working in farms, close to nature and subject to profit margins they do not completely control feel very uncomfortable with this.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xzqmp/bernie-sanders-cal...
As always, if this matters to you, get involved and vote.
¹ Which I have actually done, carefully, on my way to the mechanic 20 miles away to get them fixed.
Actually no, and driving without brakes is a perfect example. Driving a car without brakes on a public road is a crime. Arranging approval for autonomous driving on public roads is an involved and highly regulated process. Hacking in your own "improvements" is similarly criminal.
I also acknowledge that handing control to a modified computer is a little different than manually controlling a modified car, and it could have much more disastrous effects. But I don't think anyone will actually do that.
(As for when I did drive without brakes that one time, my car had a manual transmission and a fully-functioning hand brake, and I was in full control of the vehicle at all times. I drove slowly and carefully along back roads, and kept a 100 m gap ahead of me at all times. I was well-practiced at down-shifting to slow down, and used to regularly come to a complete stop from freeway speeds down the ramp without touching the brake pedal, just because I could. And "no brakes" is a slight exaggeration; I had some brakes, but there was a leak and I didn't want to use them unless I absolutely had to, and I didn't have to. Would I do it again? Probably not, but I was young and willing to take minor risks like that.)
I'm definitely of the "if you can't open it you don't own it" philosophy. I just think right now there is not enough care around auto-drivers by the companies making them, let alone the owners.
Didn't mean to derail the conversation, tractors are a whole different thing. No high speeds, no oncoming traffic.
I'm not sure why half our economy suddenly seems to be structured around these "too essential to fail" business models, but it's brand new and really really stupid. I guess this is the end result of a generation of people coming up while a gaggle of billionaires get bailed out while absolutely nobody went to prison.
Sounds like it's really, really smart from a business perspective.
I think it's similar to the idea of, "if you owe the bank a million, that's your problem, but if you owe the bank a trillion, it's their problem." Would you rather have the gov't bail out JD or risk massive food shortages? I know my choice.
> Sounds like it's really, really smart from a business perspective.
> I think it's similar to the idea of, "if you owe the bank a million, that's your problem, but if you owe the bank a trillion, it's their problem." Would you rather have the gov't bail out JD or risk massive food shortages? I know my choice.
What kind of society are we building where it is sound business strategy, effectively, to hold a gun to the head of government?
If it's the former then John Deere has set itself up for some massive liabilities if their servers crap out for extended periods during critical planting/harvest windows.
That is not an assumption or a guess. I've deployed Wi-Fi to farms and the first thing they reach for is an iPad and Netflix.
Despite his age he was a really early ebook adopter since they live in such a rural spot. The library can transfer books from bigger cities, but the shipping time is so slow and there is a limit to the number of books you can check out at once. Basically the netflix disc problem before they switched to streaming. Taking out ebooks from the library is really easy and a great way to pass the dull time spent on the tractor.
Some of the more sophisticated tractors are like being in a plane on auto-pilot. Some you can even pilot remotely if you're really not in the mood to drive it, like a gigantic Roomba.
Legal fears scare tractor manufacturers from making something truly autonomous; there's supposed to be a human in the driver's seat at all times. That said, John Deere has had self-driving tractors for almost 20 years, now. And I mean they automatically steer themselves, they don't just go straight for a predetermined amount of time (though they can do that, too.)
Not that I like that John Deer is the Apple of Farming, but let's not act like people can't hot wire and program electrical systems.
Writing a controller is a non trivial task. But it can be done.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Tractor_manufacturers...
These are two different things.
It seems likely to me a bank would be thrilled to loan money to a consistently profitable farmer whose machines just shut themselves off because Reasons and need replacing ASAP.
I don't want to make the mistake of assuming farmers can't manage their finances, they certainly can. But on the farmer's end, there's lots of variables that can be in play, adding unexpected debt can only increase that.
On the bank's side, if "widespread tractor failure" is a real event, banks would be issuing potential risky loans in the millions to farms, businesses, and people. Though yes, if it was a local credit union, dealing with just a couple clients, it might be a risk worth taking. Maybe it'd help out some small local banks as well as small farmers - but whether that's scalable could be a challenging business question.
1) Non-DRM'd tractors for this kind of thing would suddenly become valuable and used much more intensely (e.g. 24 hours a day).
2) Food prices would go up a bit as people shift to alternatives.
3) Everyone in the US cuts back on a few low-value uses of the grain (probably marginal livestock).
4) Some politicians bluster about the need for lower food prices, but there's no real will for significant change.
Then, after all the reverse engineering happens, things go back to normal.
Not that I think any of this is ever likely to happen, but even small disruptions to the food supply can have large consequences.
It would be really funny if one was Huawei.
Then there are other in eastern europe and china, but not available in europe
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/03/lamborghini-...