Autonomous equipment for crop production is on the verge of technical and economic feasibility, but government regulation may slow its adoption. Key regulatory issues include requirements for on‐site human supervision, liability for autonomous machine error, and intellectual property in robotic learning. As an example of the impact of regulation on the economic benefits of autonomous crop equipment, analysis from the United Kingdom suggests that requiring 100% on‐site human supervision almost wipes out the economic benefits of autonomous crop equipment for small and medium farms and increases the economies‐of‐scale advantage of larger farms.
Many of the great expectations of technology in the 1960s remain unfulfilled today.Alongside the optimism that drove technological development, sceptical views on the promises of technology have become popular and senses of deception, reflection, even hostility, emerged within Western societies. One such group is the Degrowth community, a heterogenous group of researchers and activists, who question technological advancements that contributed to environmentally and socially harmful economic growth. It critically observes current hypes of digital technology, which seem to follow a mantra of "the more
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.