Interview with Jānis Jaško, founder of WeedBot

Jānis Jaško has been the head and co-owner of WeedBot for four years. After years of exploring the environment, he found his next project - how to help agriculture with modern technology.

Tell me a little bit about your work. What does your company do?

WeedBot provides farmers with high-precision equipment that uses a camera to recognize plants and destroy weeds with a laser. Robots identify plants using artificial intelligence. The product is not yet fully completed, as it still needs to be improved, but customers - progressive farmers - are all over Europe.

You have a background in biology. How did you become a business leader?

Yes, I have a background in biology, and then I went on to study environmental management, and I've been involved in various environmental projects over the last 10 years, looking at ways to help farmers deal with various negative factors -- weeds, pests, diseases.

How often do you encounter AI in your daily life and in what forms?

Since part of our product is based on artificial intelligence, we discuss it very often. Both how to train networks and how to implement them for the customer. In terms of products, we encounter it every day, but new tools have also entered our daily lives, such as ChatGPT for writing texts and finding simpler solutions.

What has your experience with AI been like so far?

Overall, definitely positive, but my expectations before I started working with it were much higher. I thought it would be much more developed than it is. But once you understand its capabilities, it's very easy to use professionally, in terms of products. It's important to understand all the limitations and not be afraid of it. Artificial intelligence definitely has a lot of room to grow and develop. Especially in practical applications, complex actions and operations.

Jānis, what is your opinion about our society in this matter? Is it sufficiently educated in the field of artificial intelligence?

It's hard to say, but if you look at the people closest to me, I would say that the understanding could be better. A lot of people who could benefit from using the AI tools that are available to everyone often choose not to use them or simply don't know about them. Also, a lot of people don't have time to keep up with all this and learn about it. Unless it is purposefully organized in the workplace, people simply don't have time for it.

What are your predictions for job losses due to AI?

I think it's like all the technology that came before it, like the disappearance of the loom or the fax machine, so I think it's just a tool that will come into our lives and we won't even notice when it happens. The number of jobs that will be created because of AI will be far greater than the number of jobs that will disappear because of AI.

What professions do you think will be the first to be replaced by AI?

I think you can see it in the applications, text correction, translation, I think it will make a lot of professions easier, like medicine, and also agriculture, which is the focus of our product. Agriculture and farming will not disappear, so we focus on making the heavy manual work easier. Our product is designed with that in mind. Because in Europe they don't use chemicals to kill weeds, everyone uses manual labor. So replacing this heavy manual labor with technology is important and necessary. In our case, customers are very eager for this product.

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

I encourage people not to be afraid of AI, it's a tool that will help us. If you're afraid that it will take over the world, you just need to use it a little more to see that AI has a lot to learn to take over the world. We are the ones who teach it, and if we teach it good things, nothing bad will happen.

Find out more about WeedBot at www.weedbot.eu Follow John's career on LinkedIn

Written by Anna Stieģele, Mila editor