About This Episode
Recorded at the Ag View Solutions Executive Business Conference in Florida, guest host Joe Vaclavik talks with Scott Klososky, a technology speaker and author who built and sold software companies across several industries for roughly 20 to 25 years, usually holding each one about five years before selling. Klososky lives in Oklahoma and came into agriculture through speaking at the intersection of technology and ag. He frames the labor shortage as the engine behind machine intelligence, pointing to Japan leading the world in robots per capita because it lacks people.
His sharper point is that technology is outgrowing the ability of people to use it. Buying more capability does not help when nobody on the team can run it, so his work with organizations increasingly focuses on raising human skill rather than adding tools. On the decision side, farm decisions carry more variables every year, which is exactly the work AI handles well. He notes his John Deere work points toward equipment built not just to be autonomous but to be intelligent and to gather data.
For a farmer wanting a head start, Klososky's first step is building a river of information: 15 to 20 minutes a day reading about technology, and not only ag technology, since general tech reaches farming eventually. He expects resistance, comparing autonomous vehicles to the way a single fatal crash drew outrage while daily drunk driving deaths do not. He places the digital transformation from 2000 to 2050, the same fifty year sweep the combustion engine took from 1900 to 1950.
“Our technology is outgrowing our people's ability to use it.”
— Scott Klososky
Key Takeaways
Labor shortage drives adoption; Japan leads the world in robots per capita specifically because it does not have the people.
Technology capability on farms is running ahead of the skill to use it, so training your people beats buying more tools.
Farm decisions carry more variables every year, which is the kind of work machine intelligence is well suited to handle.
Klososky's John Deere work points to equipment designed to be intelligent and to gather data, not merely to drive itself.
Spend 15 to 20 minutes a day building a river of general technology information, not only ag sources, or you fall behind quickly.
He dates the digital transformation from 2000 to 2050, matching the fifty year run of the combustion engine from 1900 to 1950.
Full Transcript
Joe
Vaclavik: All right everybody, welcome to the Ag View Pitch. Joe Vaklovic filling in for, uh, Chris here today. We are at the Ag View Solutions Executive Business Conference here in Florida, and I am with Scott Kosowski. Scott, thank you.
Scott
Klososky: Thank you, Joe. Glad to be here.
Joe
Vaclavik: Scott, I'm reading through your biography here that I think you had written.
Scott
Klososky: You are a tech guy. Longest biography here at the show. Yeah, it's almost 4 pages.
Joe
Vaclavik: It's good though, because this gives you—
Scott
Klososky: would you read it word for word?
Joe
Vaclavik: Um, yeah, no, I won't. Um, it's real— this is, uh, super interesting though. So you're a tech guy, you've been involved in It sounds like tech— would you call them tech startups or tech businesses over the years?
Scott
Klososky: Several of them? Yeah, I did. I've done a number of software companies, kind of one after another for about 20, 25 years.
Joe
Vaclavik: So when you say one after another, you'd start a tech company, you'd sell it, you'd still— you're still on the board, you're still active, you're not active?
Scott
Klososky: You know, I was kind of a build and flip guy. I mean, my specialty was seeing a hole in the market or something that needed to be built, and I would build it usually for around 5 years or so and then sell it. And then start something else. And, uh, and strangely across different industries as well.
Joe
Vaclavik: Yeah, so the tech that you have been involved in is not agricultural in nature necessarily, yet you're here speaking for a group of farmers.
Scott
Klososky: Yeah, that's true. Uh, everything that I did was in other industries. However, I live in Oklahoma, uh, you know, had, had a ranch and, you know, did things with livestock. And then I started getting asked to speak at this intersection of kind of technology and ag along the way. And then now I do a lot of work in the ag space.
Joe
Vaclavik: Yeah, technology and agriculture, um, the, the advances that we've seen and that are ongoing are just phenomenal. And I don't farm, but I see what goes on and I hear what goes on. I mean, everything from irrigation pivots that can be run from your cell phone to, you know, tractors that drive themselves. Um, what are some of the things that you are looking at or you think are inevitable in terms of, of technology and agriculture. You also mentioned people in this also, and that that's gonna be an issue in the future.
Scott
Klososky: Yeah, all right, well, let's take both of those. First of all, we'll go backwards. The first comment, or the last comment that you made about people, we're in ag—
Joe
Vaclavik: There's a shortage of people.
Scott
Klososky: There's a shortage of people.
Joe
Vaclavik: Especially in ag.
Scott
Klososky: Yeah, that is one aspect is, all right, well, technology has a way of being able to take over lots of things that human beings did, both physical work and decision-making. So when you have a lack of people, technology naturally should grow. Japan is a perfect example. If you wonder why we have so many robots in Japan, they have more robots per capita than any other country.
Joe
Vaclavik: Yeah.
Scott
Klososky: It's because they got a shortage of people. Yeah. Right. So that's an aspect. I think another aspect of technology and people is our technology is outgrowing our people's ability to use it. And so more and more what I'm having to do with organizations is if you want to be good with technology, we got to get your people up to speed because you got a lot of power you just don't have people that can use the power. And so that's the reason we have to talk about people and technology. Your first question about what interests me today around farming and ag operations and technology, I'm getting more and more interested in the application of just machine intelligence in general, everything from AI to robotics to machine learning. And for the reasons that you said, you know, A, we're gonna have to continue to replace human labor and drive costs down.
But even on the decision-making side, you know, the decisions that a farmer needs to make are getting more and more critical, more and more variables. And this plays perfectly in what AIs are excellent at doing.
Joe
Vaclavik: I've heard more about AI in the mainstream media probably just in these last maybe 6 months than I ever have. Like ChatGPT, here's ChatGPT, it can pass the bar exam. I mean, We're headed towards something like that in the future. Are we heading toward tractors that don't need a person in the cab to, I mean, everything's up for grabs. It's all inevitable, it seems like.
Scott
Klososky: Yeah, well, I do some work for John Deere, and so I'm kind of well aware of where John Deere's heading, and yeah, you're absolutely right.
Joe
Vaclavik: Where are they heading?
Scott
Klososky: They're heading into—
Joe
Vaclavik: Without saying too much.
Scott
Klososky: A huge amount of machine intelligence built into the equipment. Not to just make the equipment autonomous, you know, but to make the equipment intelligent and to gather huge amounts of data from the equipment.
Joe
Vaclavik: Yeah, uh, they're already doing that.
Scott
Klososky: Yeah, more— they're doing it. We're not processing it nearly as well as we need to process it.
Joe
Vaclavik: Data's gold is in agriculture and in everything else.
Scott
Klososky: But right, but that's why you need the AI on the other side of that. And you're right, AI has exploded. I heard somebody said the other day, I thought it was pretty accurate, that AI has now seen its iPhone moment. Yeah, uh, you know, the iPhone came out and it just completely blew up and legitimized the whole smart device market. Same thing with AI. You're right, ChatGPT, DALL-E, Midjourney, uh, you know, all the generative AIs that have come out now, uh, you know, they've really made people understand, I think, the power of what an AI engine can do.
Joe
Vaclavik: So if you're a farmer, you're listening to this right now, and most of Chris's audience, as far as I'm aware, they're farmers in the Midwest or in the United States or maybe overseas. But is there anything that, that people listening here can do to get, say, a head start on this thing? It's inevitable, but what does it mean for these people today? Is there any steps that a listener or viewer should be taking that maybe is gonna put them ahead of their competition?
Scott
Klososky: Yeah, well, two things right off that I think are just foundational. One is, I think farmers have to build a really good river of information. Like, they gotta be reading the right things. There's a lot of information that comes out every day on technology, and if you don't, spend 15, 20 minutes a day consuming the information about what's coming out with technology, you immediately fall behind. It's hard to make good decisions. You're not even aware of what is out now. So I think you've got to build a good river of information.
Joe
Vaclavik: And that's not just ag technology. I mean, that's technology in general because it's all going to make its way into agriculture.
Scott
Klososky: Exactly. It's just, you know, what are the podcasts you're listening to? What are the blogs you're reading? And don't, don't just get myopic and only read ag things. I mean, you gotta have a good technology river of information coming in. I think that's really important.
Joe
Vaclavik: You have a podcast, I believe it said on here, is that correct? Yeah. Do a quick pitch for your podcast.
Scott
Klososky: Yeah, it's called The Digital Optimist. You can get it at my website, which is klozowski.com, and it is, it's a very thought-leading podcast about new types of technology and why they're gonna be good for the world.
Joe
Vaclavik: Check that out, guys, for sure. I'm trying to think what else we could talk about here real quickly. So you're going to talk for the group today, I believe you said, right? So we're here, we're here in Florida. It's last week in January. What's, what's going to be— if there were, say, 2 or 3 big take-homes from the speech you're going to give here for this group, what would you say that'd be?
Scott
Klososky: Uh, I think one, one takeaway is to really focus on the integration of humans and technology. You know, not just let's buy more, let's buy good technology. It's that now we gotta, we gotta improve the human's ability to be good with technology. We've got to integrate these two things. I think that's important. I think the other thing will just be some of the things I say that are high beam and what's coming next. Like, these are the things to get on your radar and start looking for these things built into tools you can buy.
Joe
Vaclavik: The future, um, is scary sometimes to a lot of people. And I think that, like, if you're not somebody like yourself who's in the know when it comes to technology, the idea of artificial intelligence or the idea of being a little bit less hands-on when it comes to everything from operating farm equipment to like financial type items. It can be— do you find that for people who aren't in the know, is that something that's a scary prospect? It kind of is for me, I think.
Scott
Klososky: I think so. I think there's a little bit of that is letting go. I mean, letting go of things you had control over and allowing technology to make its own decisions, you know, or to do things. If you ask in the audience, how many people here would buy a fully autonomous car if we took the steering wheel and the pedals out of it and you got in and just said, "Take me there," and it would take you there? Now, legitimately, a lot of people should say, "That would be fantastic." Yeah. But they won't because they want control over the car. And I think that's just what's scary for people is we're used to making our own decisions, doing our own work with our own hands, or controlling things. Technology is gonna offer us an opportunity to let it control things. It can make our lives better, but it's gonna scare people.
Joe
Vaclavik: Part of the task that the businesses that are developing these technologies are gonna have is user adoption, like convincing users that this is the right thing. Like Henry Ford invents the car, he says, "If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse," right? Like this is kind of the same thing. Like people don't know that they want it, but they probably will want it, like at the end of the day. It's gonna be something that'll make whatever it is, whether it's AI or automated, whatever, I mean, it's gonna make lives easier and businesses easier.
Scott
Klososky: Yeah, we've pushed against technology progress in the early days for 50 years. I mean, it's just something that we do. Perfect example, autonomous vehicles. One killed somebody in— I heard that. In Arizona. And everyone lost their minds. Every day, 100 drunk drivers kill people. Every day. And nobody's worried about that. But autonomous car one time kills somebody, right? Or Tesla's had a handful of people that put it on autopilot and then there was a wreck. We always fight against technology in the early days. And then we figure out the convenience or safety or whatever else, convenience. And then we adopt it.
Joe
Vaclavik: Yeah, yeah, this is going to be an interesting— what, um, is it 5 years? Is it 10 years? This is going to be changing constantly and probably much quicker than most people would think.
Scott
Klososky: So I typically tell people the digital transformation, that concept, the digital transformation will be from 2000 to 2050. All right, if you think about a 50-year sweep, that's about what the combustion engine was from 1900 to 1950.
Joe
Vaclavik: So we're in the middle of it.
Scott
Klososky: We're in the middle of it. And so, and some would argue the innovation's speeding up a little bit. So, you know, we got a ways to go.
Joe
Vaclavik: Yeah. Hey Scott, thanks for joining us on the podcast here. I know Chris wanted me to mention to thank Corteva for sponsoring this. I'm going to be speaking tomorrow. You're speaking today. We'll see you guys from Florida.
Scott
Klososky: See ya.