You don't need any time to collect your thoughts or anything. You're just ready to go.

I'm just ready to go.

Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. I am your host, Dr. Colt Knight, associate extension professor and state livestock specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. And today, we have a riveting guest from Arizona. She happened to be on the podcast in one of our our first handful of episodes, miss Ashley Wright from the University of Arizona. And she is in Maine to help us with some artificial in semination classes, but Ashley is also an expert in the other type of AI, artificial intelligence, and how you can use it to make your life easier.

In fact, we just did a big seminar in Montana this summer about how to make your life easier using artificial intelligence in our day to day extension jobs. But I think it's really important for us to communicate with producers how you could use it in your day to day lives or how to make your farm life easier as well.

Yeah. There's a lot of potential with artificial intelligence to make all your data well, some of your day to day tasks a lot easier. From summarizing things, you know, at extension, we do a lot of things like meetings and stuff like that. And one of the most tedious parts is taking notes and trying to remember exactly what you agreed to do or what other people agreed to do. Artificial intelligence has a lot of capabilities to help you with that and just take take some of the busy work and thinking out of those sorts of tasks and allow you to focus more on the parts of your job that really need you to focus on.

You know, things like actually developing content, creating creating workshops and designing workshops and putting on workshops and doing research and and being out in the field and talking to people rather than sitting in the office making task lists and things like that.

Yeah. And so I think a few things that producers, as livestock farmers, could utilize artificial intelligence for, are two of the big issues that they need a lot of help with. One is grant writing, and then another is marketing.

Yeah. Both of those both of those are great for producers to use it. It's really one of the best things is to kinda just get your thoughts down into an AI model of some sort and and get those thoughts down and organized. And then AI can really help you organize them into a cohesive cohesive product that can be turned in for a for example, for a grant. In instead of you having to wordsmith all these all these thoughts and things, you can just type like a stream of consciousness.

Hey. This is this is the idea I have, and this is what I really wanna do. And then ask AI to help you create the the project narrative, the summaries. It can also help you with anything that you think you might have forgotten. You can you can ask it to say, hey.

Are there any big holes that I have been missing? And and sometimes it finds some big holes that, you didn't think about, that they were things that you weren't thinking about when you were creating the project. So it can be sort of a a way to bounce ideas off of somebody. Really, it's the AI. That can also be really, really helpful in the grant writing, in the grant writing process as well.

Yeah. And as a as an extension person, I I get requests all the time from producers asking for help writing grants. And I don't write grants for people. It's a time consuming process.

Very time.

So I I often tell folks, you know, if if you wanna write a rough draft, I'll proofread it for you, and and I can help you. And that's usually where that conversation ends because producers are busy people. They get bogged down. They they get intimidated by the process. So whether the the grant issuer is a private foundation like American Farmland Trust or FACT or federal grants or something like a Northeast SARE grant, they will release what is called an RFP, a request for proposals.

And that's basically your grant application, but that RFP is the guidelines for what that grant is and what they will and will not fund. And so you can actually get on ChatGPT or another AI software and upload that RFP into the chat box and say and and always talk to AI like it's just another person in the room. The more conversational you are with artificial intelligence, the better that you'll get a response.

Yeah. Exactly. Just just pretend it's your friend that you are telling about your super cool project that you really wanna do. Upload that RFP file and and then ask it. So here here's my super cool project that I really wanna get funded and really wanna do.

And and ask it to help you write the RFP. Now you're gonna have to go back and do some proofreading and things on your own. Right? It the AI does not always get it right. Sometimes it misses the boat a little bit on, for example, thing things.

It just kinda misses the boat on certain thing certain topics. It just is not as knowledgeable knowledgeable about it, thinks it's knowledgeable. But your your expertise is really gonna be key in just going through and proofreading and making sure that it didn't make any silly mistakes, and that it actually understood what you were trying to accomplish. But so so you do have to have some knowledge. You can't write about things that you don't know about.

But certainly, it can really help you fill out that RFP and make sure because a lot a lot of grants are really sticklers that you got all the things turned in that you needed to get turned in. They sometimes they get so many grant applications that they will simply do a first pass and toss out any grant applications that didn't fulfill all their requirements, that didn't, you know, put in this one little paragraph or one little question that they needed answered because that's just an easy way to kinda weed out weed weed them out right off the bat, because they just have so many. So you can use AI to help you get all those little details and questions filled in and out and make sure that you've got everything absolutely perfect for that grant and all their questions are answered.

Yeah. So so what you do is you take that RFP, you upload it into the chat box. And what I like to ask AI is, are you familiar with this request for a proposal and upload that that proposal? And then it'll come back and it will say yes because it will then have read that RFP, and it will give you a summary of what that RFP is. And then you can say, well, I am a livestock producer.

I raise goats or sheep or or cattle, and and this is how I market them, and and this is my my production model. How could I benefit from this grant? And then the AI software is going to give you a suggestion. Or maybe you have a thought in your head already, and then you want to tell the, the AI software. It's like, this is what I was thinking.

How can I make this fit into this request for a proposal? And it will do that for you. And then once you get your kinda basic outline together and you like the direction it's going, you can actually ask AI to write the grant for you.

Yeah. And it it will it will save you a lot of time on there because some of these grant proposals do get very lengthy. They do require a lot of pages of information. Some of it in in time in in some applicate some applications I've seen be very, very redundant too, that they've asked for the same thing kinda multiple different ways, in those grant proposals. And so AI can help you kinda get get those questions answered for them without banging your head against the wall trying to be repetitive and answer the same question a couple of different ways.

It can help you do all that as well. So it's a really great tool. It's a really great tool to use, to help kinda lighten that workload a little bit. You still have to come up with some ideas or or and make sure that those ideas are gonna work for you. And again, you still have to do some proofreading, but you can you can save a lot of time.

Yeah. And and when it gives you an iteration of that grant, you wanna read over it, look for errors, look for areas that that maybe it's diverging paths from your intended paths, and then you just tell AI, I like this proposal that you have created except for this, this, and this. There's a spelling error here. There's an error here. Can you fix that?

And then it will give you another generation. And you can keep doing that until it's perfect. The one thing that you do not wanna do is ask AI to generate data because it it doesn't go out and collect real data. What it does is it, it creates what looks like data. So it or or don't ask it to create citations.

Or if it does, you wanna double check those because it will create a facsimile of what a real grant looks like. So instead of, you know, doing all the research and citing that research. What it's doing is it's looking at another grant application and saying, oh, it was made this way with citations put in here. So it just like makes those citations up

Yes. I I have found very helpful to when I'm when I'm kinda starting a grant process and and looking through my own, research, to do some of my own research as I'm kinda outlining what what I think I might be wanting to do as a project. And then take those citations and also upload them into whatever AI you're using and specifically tell it to use these sources. Now, again, you still have to double check them. It will still get some things wrong.

Sometimes it it likes to correlate or, or imply causation of things that are not actually causations. So you you really have to watch that and just make sure that everything is the way that you want it to be. But, again, it really helps, and it can save you some time.

Yeah. And and AI can't determine what is good and bad information from the Internet. So if there are popular myths out there, then it it may just assume that that's a fact. So you have to be careful with that kind of thing. But, again, the most daunting part of this entire process is to sit down and write a 10 page paper or a three page or a 20 page.

You know, that's the part that most folks, they just give up at. This software will do it for you some in a matter of minutes sometimes.

Absolutely.

But you have to do your homework, and you have to be able to input what you want into it, and you have to know what you want. If you don't know what you want, you can ask AI to give you ideas. And then you can just if you don't like the first idea, you just say try again. Or if you get tired of typing try again, you can say, give me 10 more alternatives to that. And eventually, you're gonna it'll start getting into a loop.

It runs out of new ideas, but you have to keep giving it feedback. And, again, talk to it conversationally like you were another person. Say, I like this idea, but I would rather it go in this direction.

Yeah. And you mentioned something earlier that I wanna go back to is tell it about your operation. If it doesn't already know what you do, tell it some specific information. You know, this is my this is my herd size. This is what I'm trying to accomplish.

This is the breeds I raise. All those things are gonna just make just make the output better. This is definitely a garbage in garbage out scenario. So really try to give it good information about you as well so that it has something to go off. So it's not just shooting in the dark.

If you just say, have a I have a family farm and I want to do x, y, or z, it's gonna say, oh, well, you must have sheep and goats and chickens and all these things, and you might be a dairy producer. So if you if you don't tell it exactly what you're doing, you know, I I retain my own heifers. I do this. I utilize artificial insemination. Like, these things, can really help it be better at giving you those ideas.

And if you have social media or a website or any kind of online presence, put those links into the AI chat when you're describing what you're doing because it can pull a lot of information off of that plus what you're telling it. I've I've found that very useful, kind of that same trick I was telling you about earlier. Are you familiar with x? Sometimes it's you. Say, are you familiar with doctor Colt w Knight of the University of Maine?

And then it will say yes, and then it will basically respond with a bio. But what that means is that it's now searched the Internet for you and your operation or whatever, and it's now and then you can say, yes. That's me. And so it's not pulling from some other farm named Lonesome Road Farm. There might be two, and you don't wanna confuse it.

So but if you do it that way, it it guarantees that it's pulling the source information from the right location.

Yeah. Absolutely. So the other thing we kinda talked about was marketing. So especially if you have a social media presence, AI can really help you generate content for that.

A lot of different ways. Right?

Yes. A lot of different ways from captions for photos to long form content for your website. It can really help you with those things. And and a lot of times, especially with social media, what drives engagement is that you just have to be posting kinda kinda consistently. And that can be really cumbersome if that if you don't have a full time marketing manager to, like, manage that sort of thing.

It's very dumb.

And honestly, if you wanna grow your social media, you have to post daily. Minimum

daily. Yep.

And that can be difficult.

Yes.

And you have to look for the trends. You know, do you ever wonder why you're scrolling through your phone sometimes and you see these people doing the same dances or the same jokes or whatever? You you're doing that because the algorithm has picked that up. And if you want noticed, you have to do that.

Yes. Yes. You do. Mhmm. That that can really help drive engagement.

Which you can use AI for because you can just ask AI, I want to increase my social media presence for my farm website. How do I do that? And it'll give you suggestions, and it'll pull all the hot topics and trends that are popular now, and it can help you stay on top of those trends. And you just gotta keep up with it. And if you're not a social media person and and you're wanting to direct market to folks, you're gonna have to learn, or you're gonna have to recruit your relatives or friends that know how to do it.

Yeah. Absolutely. But again, you have this tool called AI that can at least take some of the burden away from being being the marketing person, the marketing guru. It can kinda act like that, especially if you are even a little bit savvy with it, both with social media and AI. You can probably get it done a lot easier than you think you can.

And it can create images. You know, we we stay away from realistic images. But if you're wanting to create, like, a postcard or or something like a a magazine article looking thing, you can do that. Right? So if it's just words with a picture or a a cartoon picture instead of a a real life, it doesn't do a great job generating real life images, so you wanna stay away from that.

But stick figure type stuff, cartoon type stuff, comic book type deals with, like, blurbs where something is saying something or does a really good job generating that kind of stuff.

Yeah. That kinda and that kinda content is great, super useful. And then you can kinda then you don't have to spend all that time also trying to become a graphic artist. Yeah. Right?

You have AI to help you be the graphic artist.

Like a news flyer. So you've got you're gonna be at such and such flea market this week, and you wanna let folks know. You can use you can just tell AI that generate me a flyer that I can post on social media, and it'll be the right size, shape.

Yeah. Absolutely. Just plug in the information you need. You you might have to do a few iterations of changes. You know?

Hey. I like this. Hey. I don't like that. Hey.

Make the address bigger, things like that. But, again, instead of you having to go in and figure out how to manipulate those images to make those changes and find all the right buttons in Adobe or whatever program you're using. You just, again, talk to it like you're talking to your friend and say, hey, can you can you just make the address bigger and easier to read? And I liked this bold, and it's too many fonts. Only use one font.

And then it'll just re re re up the image with the changes that you have asked it to make. It's it's like it's like just talking to a graphic designer and telling it what you want.

And here's the thing. And and I learned this from the conference we were at this summer. You can ask AI how to talk to AI for AI to generate what you want. And I that really didn't cross my mind. And we sat through a presentation there in Montana, and it sounded like two people going back and forth on on something.

And at the very end, the presenter was like, and we asked AI to generate a conversation on how to talk to AI, and that's what you just read. And so you can just ask it. I would like to design a marketing campaign. Can you help me with that? And then it will say, yes.

Can you tell me, would you like it in a vintage style, a classic style, a modern style? And then you can tell it. And then it will ask you the questions that you need to ask it to create what you would like to create. So if you have a vision in your head, but you're you don't know how to put it on paper and you don't know how to ask the the AI software how to create it for you, just ask it how how you would like how it would like you to interact with AI.

Yeah. Those are all really great tips. I think I don't think you can go wrong with any of those. Another thing that I have found helpful too is, again, just like with the citations, if you have an image that you want to base it off of, if you have somebody else's flyer that you really like that was well designed or a couple of examples, you can go ahead and upload those right into the AI software and say, hey. Can you base it on these this?

I like this particular thing about this design. I like this particular thing about this design, and then this particular thing about the third one. Can you kinda mesh that all together? And and here's what I need. And and it'll usually do a pretty decent job of of getting all those things, all those elements pulled together for you into something new and different, that's not the same as either of those other things.

And the more you interact with artificial intelligence, if you use the same one, it gets to know you. It learns what you like, what you do not like, and it gets better and better. So every time you use it, it gets easier because you become more familiar with the process, but also because the AI becomes more familiar with you.

Yeah. Absolutely. So I you know, in the beginning, AI for me, like and there's lots of examples of this on the Internet. It's try it tries to put in, like, way too many adjectives and gets a little bit too flowery and weird in its language designs. And you could just kinda tell it was written by AI.

At this point, mine pretty much knows my exact writing style because I've told it, you know, hey, take out. There's too many adjectives. Tone this down. I don't like this. And I've uploaded enough of my own writing into it that it is it's kinda scary that it's it now can get pretty close to what I would actually write on my own, without the use of AI.

It it can really get pretty close. I still have a few things that I end up tweaking on it sometimes because I just can't get it to quite let go of certain things, but, it's gotten better and better.

Mhmm. And and along the marketing side of things, the way to drive the most engagement to your page is with short form videos. They're they're called reels in a lot of different platforms or shorts on YouTube. Basically, one minute or ninety second videos, usually in in vertical orientation and not horizontal orientation. But what you can do is go out and take a long form video.

You know, maybe you you go create a a five or twenty minute video with just your cell phone of you doing farm task or whatnot. And there are AI softwares that you can put that long form video into, and it will make all the edits and cuts into a nice thirty second or sixty minute reel.

Yeah.

And so that one twenty minute video, you might be able to get thirty, forty short reels out of it.

Yeah. Absolutely. So that's a great idea. I actually have a a GoPro, and you could set that that up and record a a time lapse or whatever if you're just doing the farm tours or whatever. And certain apps, and particularly the GoPro quick app, I know, does this, and it will do exactly what you just described and is is make those cuts.

And and you can kinda change them if there's certain ones that you particularly want. But, otherwise, it just goes through and finds what it deems interesting content. And it's it's usually pretty spot on, as far as what's interesting. You might have to futz with it just a little bit. But, and there's other softwares too.

I was just thinking that one in particular because it interfaces so nice with with GoPro, which is what I have, to get those reels up and find the all you now all that's left for you to do is to find the music that's trending. On TikTok. There's or or YouTube or whatever you're doing, there's always some sort of music that's trending. And that's probably what you wanna use, to help drive that algorithm, to show it to more people, and get and upload it.

And again, you can ask AI which music is trending this week, and it will look at this week's trends and tell you what it is.

Yep.

It works really well. But again, you need to proofread everything that you get back from AI. You you never wanna rely on AI to generate statistics or facts or data because it will just make facsimiles. It doesn't do the math, so to speak. It does a great job of of taking a lot of information and condensing it down into, like, easily accessible stuff, but it doesn't do a good job of generating data.

Yes. Absolutely. It also does a really great job at doing, like, the I'm gonna call it the fluffier kind of language that you need in some of these grants and and things like that. You know, the the intro, the why why does this matter? You know, those sorts of things kinda take a little bit more formal type language on them when you want to write them and things like that.

And it can be really hard to turn your brain into writing that sort of introduction and things like that. And and with AI, you can just say, here's my project. Please write the intro and all the things. And it will do a decent job of getting that kinda laid out for you without you having to, without you having to to do it.

Mhmm. Or or if you would like to just write it yourself and then upload it into AI and say, AI, can you put this in formal grant language? And it'll take what you have written and then just transpose it into the more formal grant language.

Yeah. The other thing too is if you have specifics, that you have written on your own and you just want AI to go through and proofread, proofread for grammar, proofread for clarity, proofread for readability, things like that. It can also do that for you.

And then again and then when you think you have a finished product, reupload that RFP and the application and ask AI, did this grant application satisfy all the request from that RFP? And it'll find any holes that you may have left, and it can make suggestions on where you could strengthen it.

Yep.

So we've got we've got marketing and grant writing that can make your life a whole lot easier as a livestock producer. Ashley, what are just some of the things that that you use on a day to day basis to make your just regular job easier?

I love to use AI for reporting. For we have to do quite a few quite a bit of reports just on on the impacts and outcomes of what, what we have been doing and and how it's impacting the stakeholders and things like that. And it's just really helpful to be able to put my data that I have collected into AI and say, can you generate me a nice readable report, so that I can then turn it in? And it it does a really nice job of that because it's really just summarizing my own data that I've already collected. Again, I just have to do a little bit of read through.

And at this point, because I use it so much, it does understand my job. It does understand what I do and who I am and the stake the stakeholder audiences audiences that I serve. And so it does a really great job of pulling out what are the most important pieces, and putting those into something that somebody, at the university, even if they're not in agriculture, can read and understand why it's important. That has been a huge time saver for me in terms of using utilizing AI. And probably one of my best use cases for it is just my reporting.

And then one of the other things that you had told me that that you had used it in the past for is this when you have to write a formal letter or email or maybe you're upset with someone, you can kind of write the email that you wanted to that's really maybe harsh and doesn't contain professional language and then ask AI to, like, make it nicer or more professional.

That that also really helps. Right? You you know you know those those times where you wanna write the email and then you feel like you need to sleep on it before you actually send it. You can actually just run it through AI. And I just I will upload the email itself, or or copy it into there.

Hey. Here's the email I received. And then just sort of stream of conscious my reply. You know, this is how I wanna reply. Can you make this sound formal or professional?

Can can you keep the tone friendly? All those things. And it it really will do a good job of making making that email sound nice for the other person that's reading it. But still, like, I can tell it, make it nice but firm so that, you know, I I'm not backing down. Here are my boundaries.

This is a line that, you know, that we need discussion on. But it and it so it won't but it but it will what it won't make the other person angry angrier, it kind of tones down the situation, which I I really like. And it and as long as I give it a good stream of conscious, like, here are the points that I need it to hit. You know, this is why this is not okay because of x, y, and z. It will get all those in there and, really make it sound like a really nice polished email.

And and again, it just takes a lot of the thinking out of it for me is instead of having to, like, stew over, did I write this email correctly for, like, two hours? You know, did I hit the right tone? Did I make sure that I'm being firm but not but but communicating effectively the boundaries that we need to have set here? AI can just do it for me in, like, two minutes.

Mhmm. Is there is there anything else that you would like to highlight on the AI side that our livestock producers might find useful?

You know, there's a lot of new technologies coming out that are utilizing AI. I think some of them at some point are gonna be really, really helpful for our livestock producers. You know, in term you know, things like, the smart tags, some AI software, you know, in terms of, like, your your budget software and your record keeping software and things like that, keep an eye out for those opportunities because those are just gonna continue to get better and better and better. And they will eventually get to the point where they are gonna be significant time savers for you. I have tried a few of some software just in my extension job at at this point.

Yes. Some of them were kinda getting to to to be the point where they were a time saver. But I think it's gonna be a little bit before they're fully there yet. But but, some of you are probably early adopters and ready to start adopting some of these technologies and giving feedback to the companies about how this can and can and how this can work better. And, again, I just we're I think we're gonna see some of that technology getting better and better and better, to the point where it can really save you some time.

And I'm glad you mentioned record keeping because I was gonna bring that up. As livestock producers, we should be keeping records both on health, production, and whatnot. So it's sometimes it's a struggle just to to keep and and write those records down and store them somewhere. But the other thing is is it doesn't do us any good to keep records if we don't look at our records and make decisions based on our records. So even something as easy as taking your cell phone and and putting calving dates or farrowing dates or when animals are in heat on your calendar in your cell phone, you can actually we learned this or we we figured this out during the conference because someone asked us a question.

Can AI summarize my calendar on my phone? And we didn't know. And so we we looked into it, and we figured out, yes, it can. So you can actually well, if you see something, cow x is limping, this sheep had twins on this day, so on and so forth, or we bought a ton of feed September 29. That feed was gone October 30.

Something like that. Put all that stuff into your cell phone just in your calendar, and then you can download that calendar file and upload that to AI and ask AI to analyze that, and it can give you a summary. Be like, oh, these cows had calves during this month, or we had this many calves during this week, or or the withdrawal period on that medication is over on such and such date. You know, AI really has the power to summarize all that information that that you've recorded but really haven't thought about. And then you can use that to make wise decisions.

Yeah. Absolutely. And that's a really great use case. In fact, that's sort of how I've I've started doing some of my reporting is because all of my appointments and meetings and things are generally in my calendar. And that's exactly what I do is go through and download my calendar, upload it into AI, and ask it for a summary.

How many how many meetings of this type did I go to? How many producer events? And all I have to do is remember to keep my calendar updated, with those things, go in and plug in the number of attendees that that came, and those sorts of things. And as long as I'm kinda keeping on top of those records in that calendar, then AI can really help me to summarize, that information.

That that's what I've started doing as well since since we've looked into that. It was before I kept all the dates in my calendar. And so at the end of the year, when I have to report all that information, I would have to start January 1 and just go day by day and be like and then sometimes it's like, oh, I forgot about this event. How many people showed up? And then I gotta you know, it takes a while to go back and and find all that missing information that you forgot.

But if you put it all in there the day of, and then at the end of the year, you ask it to summarize it for you, it's just instead of it taking a day and a half, it it can now take twenty minutes.

Exactly.

So I think these are all great use scenarios for AI. We encourage you to explore AI. It's free. It's easy to use. I think the more you play with it, the more, apprehension maybe will alleviate, and you'll be willing to use it more and more.

It can really make your busy life easier. You you never wanna use AI as, like, so anytime that you would interact with your customers or clients or what, you don't want AI to do that. But, man, for all that mundane stuff that we do

Just think about great. Just think about how much more time you will have to spend with your cows or your pigs and your customers instead of doing busy work.

Mhmm.

You know, record keeping, reporting, things like that. It really makes a difference and can help you, really enjoy the the part of farming or ranching that we all really enjoy, right, which is the animals and the people, not the paperwork.

Yep. Well, Ashley, it was great having you with us on the podcast again. Thank you. We would like to remind our listeners if they have questions, comments, concerns, or suggested episodes, they can email us at extension.farmcast@maine.edu.