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AI-powered robots answer US farmers’ call amid diminishing labor force
Facing a diminishing workforce, some farmers in the United States are looking to artificial intelligence as a means to adapt to the changing labor landscape. In Florida, for example, Gary Wishnatzki of Wish Farms is rolling out AI-powered robots that are capable of picking his crops.
Wish Farms in FL made a name for itself as a producer of premium strawberries and blueberries. Strawberries are a particularly demanding crop; since every three days, the plant will give off new ripe fruit. If these fruits are not harvested according to their cycle, the strawberry plant dies.
According to Wishnatzki, his farms need around 600 workers to harvest his 600 acres of crops every two or three days. Thus, during season, workers are faced with very few rest days. In a statement to CBS News, Wishnatzki noted that his farms’ labor force, a significant number of whom is from Mexico, has been facing challenges over the past 15 years.
“We’ve seen a shrinking labor force and an aging labor force. People just aren’t showing up anymore to do this work. I started to look at what was really causing it. It was more of a demographic issue than a political issue or anything else. As the Mexican economy continues to improve as more fruit is being grown in Mexico, people aren’t going to be coming anymore,” Wishnatzki said.
In order to address his farm’s shortage of workers, Wishnatzki looked to automation through AI-powered robots. He co-founded Harvest CROO Robotics, a company aimed at developing a machine that can pick crops using robots and artificial intelligence. A few years later, Harvest CROO has created an AI-powered robot that uses imaging technology to determine which berries are ripe enough to pick. The technology behind the AI-powered robot was described to CBS News by Paul Bisset, Harvest CROO’s CEO.
“We’re collecting 50 to 100 images a plant, and all of those images are fed into our AI system in order to tell us, OK, this is a good berry, this is one we want to go after,” Bisset said.
Even farming giants are turning to Silicon Valley to advance their operations. Farming equipment producer John Deere, for one, has opened an office in San Francisco aimed at developing smart solutions that can be used for the agricultural sector. Alex Purdy, the head of John Deere Labs, stated that the future of farming lies in advanced tech.
“We know that we absolutely need to go and seek out capabilities in machine learning, in deep learning, in robotics and advanced analytics. And Silicon Valley has been receptive,” he said.
As we noted in a previous report, using technology in agriculture has been the focus of Kimbal Musk through his company, Square Roots. Square Roots converts old shipping containers into advanced vertical farms, which would enable even the most populated cities to have access to fresh, organic food. So far, Kimbal’s initiative continues to gain ground, just as his nonprofit, Big Green, continues to expand its reach into schools across America.
Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).
Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.
“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”
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Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.
It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”
Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.
There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:
“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”
SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.
Tesla has expanded the footprint of a massive safety feature worldwide with a recent Software Update labeled as 2026.20.6. The expansion of the “Blind Spot Warning While Parked” feature represents the more widespread availability of the feature, which aims to prevent “dooring.”
Dooring is when a driver or passenger opens a car door into the path of an oncoming road user, usually a cyclist or motorcyclist. It is among the most common types of cycling accidents, the League of American Bicyclists says.
For this reason, Tesla created a feature that warns occupants not to open the door because an object is approaching. The feature will sound a chime, and it will also delay the opening of the door to prevent an incident.
The release notes state (via Not a Tesla App):
“If you attempt to open a door while an approaching object is detected in your blind spot (for example, a bicyclist approaching from behind) a chime sounds, and your door will not open upon initial button press. Wait a short time and press the button a second time to override the warning.”
Tesla initially rolled out this feature back in 2024 with the Model 3 “Highland.” However, it remained with the Model 3 exclusively for over a year; that was until Tesla added it to the Cybertruck this past Spring.
Now, it is making its way to the new Model Y, 2021 and newer Model S, and 2021 or newer Model X.
The prevention of dooring incidents could eliminate many injuries to cyclists, especially in an urban setting. Dooring accounts for 10-20 percent of bike-related crashes in major cities, and over 17,000 dooring-related incidents were treated in the U.S. over the course of a decade. These usually involve fractures, contusions, and head trauma.
Tesla confirmed this morning that it has sent the first production units, manufactured with no steering wheel or pedals, to on-road testing in Austin, sharing video of the first rides with no human controls.
The lack of steering wheels and pedals in the Cybercab aligns with Tesla’s self-certification of Robotaxi as Level 4 SAE, a platform it plans to make widespread through internal vehicles and customer-owned cars that will operate and generate revenue for individuals.
The start of these engineering tests is a major signal for Tesla, which plans to bring driverless, wheel-less, and pedal-less Cybercabs to market in the coming months. With production already well underway at Gigafactory Texas, where the Cybercab is built, there is some inclination to believe the first public rides could happen sooner rather than later.
Engineering tests of the first production Cybercab have begun in Austin pic.twitter.com/fk3KQvcE8a
— Tesla (@Tesla) June 30, 2026
Tesla’s engineering tests will put the Cybercab in real-world scenarios, testing not only the hardware, but more importantly, the software that drives the car around Austin with nobody supervising it within the car.
This is perhaps the biggest part of the internal testing process, especially prior to allowing regular, everyday people to hail the Cybercab for an autonomous ride. These early rides serve as a true benchmark for Tesla: How many rides can it achieve safely? How many miles did it travel consecutively without needing an intervention? What scenarios challenge the Full Self-Driving suite the most?
The proper precautions have already been put into place as well, as Tesla released the First Responders Guide to Cybercab over the weekend, ensuring that emergency services have 24/7 access to Robotaxi Assistance, as well as other boundaries, such as Geofencing features that can be used to redirect autonomous vehicle traffic due to accidents, road closures, construction, or maintenance.
Cybercab seems genuinely close to being added to the Robotaxi fleet in Austin, but Tesla has prioritized safety throughout this entire process. Therefore, we think it could be months before it truly starts giving rides to the public. People have been frustrated with this, but Robotaxi in Austin has a tremendous safety record so far, so the slow rollout has kept people safe and accidents to a minimum.
The most important thing is that Tesla continues to show consistent progress in the Cybercab’s ramp-up toward fleet addition. A few weeks back, we saw the EPA reward the Cybercab a Certificate of Conformity, allowing it to enter the stream of commerce. Then, we saw Tesla add decals, signaling that it was likely about to start testing it publicly. That has now happened.
The next big move will be the announcement of the first rides, so this Summer should be filled with anticipation.
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Tesla expands massive safety feature worldwide in latest update
