Robots thrive in the forest on jobs that humans find too boring

BillerudKorsnas AB’s Gruvon production unit in Sweden. Source: BillerudKorsnas AB

From watching pulp cook for hours on end and tracking parasite bugs on satellite photos to handling lengthy legal documents, Swedish forest companies are creating new jobs they would never ask a human to do. 

Packaging maker BillerudKorsnas AB has been an early adopter of artificial intelligence by using the technology to analyse thousands of diagrams to determine just how long it needs to cook its wood chips before they turn into pulp. While that process could be done manually, it says it would be difficult to find any human who’d be willing to spend all day just looking at such charts.