Dan Rhodes, Education Coordinator, BCCD
Over the past year, while doing educational programming around Bradford County and even up into southern NY for a special assignment, I’ve been running into Susquehanna River fishing enthusiasts all over the place asking me the same question; ‘‘I’ve been fishing this river for 40 years and never seen or caught an American eel…until now! Why eels…why now?”. Multiple anglers would go on to explain that while fishing usually at night for catfish or other sportfish over the past few months, they would very surprisingly reel in large 2’-3’ American eels. “Where are they coming from and what has changed?” they would always ask. 

Miranda Neville, Agricultural Resource Specialist, BCCD
 
It’s human nature to be weary of the unknown. Any time there is new buzzword in the media, the world seems to split on either side. The buzzword(s) this round: ChatGPT and Generative Artificial Intelligence. I’ll be honest, I’m on the more skeptical side. As for most livestock farmers, the only A.I. we typically deal with often results in a beautiful new baby calf.
​
We’ve become a world of “work smarter, not harder.” That mindset has come about mainly out of necessity because the need for labor and lack of laborers is a recurrent problem. Farm labor used to be as simple as hiring the local high school kid to milk cows, stack square bales, or tend to the livestock, but not anymore. As a replacement for lack of able bodies, many farmers have turned to utilizing innovative technology. Milking robots, automatic feeders, robotic alley scrapers, and feed pushers are all examples of technology that can be programmed to make farmers’ lives easier (in theory). What if those “robots” developed their own way of thinking and responding to situations. That sounds like the making for a pretty intense sci-fi movie…one that we might not be too far from. With automation and a faced paced world, artificial intelligence (I’ll use Chat GPT as an example) is making a huge impact, but at what cost?