Calgary, Alta. (Rural Roots Canada) – Ashley Smith’s job title hasn’t changed in the past two years, but how she does her work has.
Smith is the national product manager for seed growth at Bayer CropScience Canada. Over the past two years, she has become a regular user of generative artificial intelligence. Tools that can summarize meetings, pull together research from multiple sources and help her team reach decisions faster.
“A lot of people think about it affecting the efficiency and automation of how we do business,” she said, speaking at the Advancing Women in Agriculture West Conference. “But if you can switch that mindset more into an augmentation of our thought processes, reducing the complexity of our business to help augment our decision making, that changes things.”
Smith was among the panelists at the conference discussing how AI is reshaping the agriculture sector, both in day-to-day operations and in the longer-term changes reshaping the industry.
Bayer developed an internal tool called MyGen Assist that brings together information across teams and speeds up decision-making. Smith also uses publicly available tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot.
On the research side, the company is using generative AI in a crop protection program called CropKey. The process uses the technology to design crop protection products, with the goal of moving new innovations through development and into commercial markets faster than traditional methods would allow.
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Still, Smith is confident that the technology is not a replacement for the people using it. The agriculture industry is built on relationships and trust, she said, and those aren’t things that a machine can generate
“The accountability to the decisions is a human decision,” she said. “Generative AI will never replace that.”
Her hesitations are rooted less in the technology itself and more in how fast it is moving. Data privacy rules and compliance standards have not moved as quickly as the technology, she said, and that gap worries her.
Speaking to a room full of women working across the agriculture industry, Smith said AI could offer something specific to the people in it.
“It’s vastly our ability to advance the female voice in agriculture,” she said.
Her message to anyone still on the fence about trying the technology simple. Just try it.
“Don’t be scared about using generative AI,” she said. “It can help augment your daily life both professionally and personally. Dipping your toe into the pool is a great first step.”
