Two truths and a lie: America is getting older, leading to an increasing number of older Americans relying on a shrinking labor force; American farmers are in trouble because of a shortage of talent and shrinking margins; and, artificial intelligence is too unreliable to assist with solving these and related public policy concerns.

Truth: The old-age dependency ratio is surging. In other words, a combination of longer life expectancies and lower birth rates has put the U.S. in a tough position.

The dwindling fraction of Americans in the labor force constitutes a difficult task ahead: generate enough economic growth to cover the nation’s infrastructure needs, financial ambitions, and healthcare demands, especially for our seniors. This tall order will not be achieved through a can-do attitude.

The fact of the matter is we need huge surges in labor productivity so that fewer workers can add more value. Education can help workers discover new ways to do the same job more efficiently. Likewise, experience can uncover new breakthroughs that stretch the contributions of a single worker. Ultimately, though, something more transformative will be required if the nation’s shrinking workforce will meet the needs of society.

Truth: Farms across America are on the verge of closing. A combination of factors have left farmers struggling to get by.

There’s the trade situation. Shifting tariffs have been a boon to some producers, while leaving others in a gulch. Then there’s the immigration slowdown, which hinders access to labor at key points in the harvest. Of course, there’s also the generational gap in interest in keeping up the family farm. Kids these days are opting to leave the farm behind.

More recently, there’s now a war that’s imperiling access to key supplies. The aggregation of these trends spells long-term negative consequences. Those consequences reach beyond the nation’s farming communities. Food security is national security, as noted by the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Lie: AI has no part to play in remedying these time-sensitive and significant issues.

Let’s turn first to the question of an aging population and a need for a surge in labor productivity. In critical domains, there’s simply not going to be enough Americans to fill key roles. Within a decade more than 1.7 million Americans will need some form of elder care. Current signs do not indicate a rush among young people to take on those roles.

AI can step in. Japan shows the way forward. They’ve deployed robots that complement existing elder care providers so that the relatively short staffed facilities can meet the needs of all residents. While the use of robots in critical settings may make some folks uneasy, it’s important to be clear-eyed about the path forward: Augmenting human labor is the only option.

There’s simply not enough workers to step into all these roles in elder care and other industries that are woefully short on workers. This blunt conclusion is important to accept so that we can start asking how to build and implement AI tools for these tasks, rather than contesting their inclusion in the first place.

Second, on the question of saving our farms and securing our food supply. We must champion an agricultural policy that leverages AI so that more producers can engage in precision agriculture — a fancy way of referring to tech-enabled farming. As summarized by the CSIS, this way of farming broadly refers to the data-driven practice of making timely, informed decisions at a micro scale to produce better outcomes for farm soils, plants, animals, and the farmer.

A farm that has adopted precision agriculture in the United States, for example, might use satellite, aircraft, and drone data to develop crop condition, soil, and yield maps, install cameras and vision-based sensors on-farm to monitor crop health, or employ unmanned farm equipment with a preprogrammed path to handle operations like planting, pruning, watering, or harvesting.

While large farms have been deploying such tech for a long time, only one-in-four farmers do so across the United States. Yet, it’s these smallholder farmers that stand to benefit the most from AI-aided agriculture. AI-powered chatbots like FarmerChat and AI tools that aid with planning crops and setting prices can go a long way toward helping small farmers navigate a complex and shifting economic moment.

Likewise, farming robots can take on some of the essential farming tasks for which there are no viable human-based labor alternatives. Consider, for example, the development of an AI scarecrow to keep pests away — it’s a key example of a productivity-enhancing task that is ill-suited for human workers.

America doesn't have the luxury of letting fear-based regulation guide the AI revolution. The demographics won't wait, the farms won't wait, and neither can we.

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Kevin Frazier is a senior fellow with the Abundance Institute.

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