At this high-tech farm, the boss is an AI-powered algorithm

Farmers work at the Bowery Farming Inc. indoor farm in Kearny, New Jersey, U.S., on Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2018. The startup says automation, space-saving vertically stacked crops and a year-round growing season make its operations 100-plus times more productive per square foot than traditional farms. Photographer: David Williams/Bloomberg

Each morning when she gets to work at Bowery Farming Inc, Katie Morich changes into a clean uniform, puts on a hairnet and cleans her hands with sanitiser. Then she consults a computer monitor displaying all the tasks she needs to accomplish that day. 

The to-do list’s author isn’t human; it’s a piece of proprietary software that uses reams of data collected at the indoor farm to make important decisions: how much to water each plant, the intensity of light required, when to harvest and so forth. In short, Morich and her fellow human farmers do what the computer tells them to do.