AI, Evolution, and the Future of Human-Centered Farming and Manufacturing - with Kun He of Bayer

**Daniel Faggella** (0:13)
Welcome, everyone, to the Emerge AI in Business Podcast. Today's guest is Kun He, Lead Scientific Advisor at Bayer. Kun joins Emerge's Matthew DeMello to examine how AI is reshaping decision-making in agriculture, emphasizing where data-driven models improve efficiency and where human judgment can make the high-risk, unconventional calls that lead to real breakthroughs. He shows how AI can streamline complex operational workflows but that the most transformative leaps still depend on leaders who can recognize outlier opportunities and make bold decisions that data alone would never surface. Just a quick note for our audience that the views expressed by Kun He on today's program do not reflect that of Bayer or its leadership. In AI, we see a lot of skepticism and for good reason. The challenge isn't excitement, it's execution. Data readiness, integration complexity, security concerns, proving ROI, it all has to align. Our sponsor, SHI, has been a major global IT solutions provider for over 35 years, helping 17,000-plus organizations navigate exactly these challenges. SHI guides enterprise leaders through their proven framework. Imagine the right AI strategy for your business context. Experiment in their AI and cyber labs to validate solutions with your actual data and workloads, typically in two to six weeks, and adopt solutions that deliver measurable outcomes in production. If you're looking for guidance on moving from AI ambition to real resolve, check out shi.com, that's shi.com. Look for the AI and cyber labs or schedule a consultation with VT. Now, the conversation with Kun.

**Matthew DeMello** (2:09)
Kun, welcome to the program. Thanks so much for being with us this week.

**Kun He** (2:13)
Thank you for having me.

**Matthew DeMello** (2:15)
Absolutely, I'll say, before we turn the microphones on, you were asking if we've had biologists on the show. I will specify, we haven't had biologists specifically in agriculture, at least since I've started. We've had some folks in agriculture, AI leaders. We had Stefan Hoffman of Botch, managing director of Botch UK, on the program not too long ago, really fascinating conversation. But we haven't had too many biologists specifically in agriculture spaces, especially for large manufacturers like Bayer. So it's a great pleasure to have you on the program. Today, we're talking about how we're thinking about human talent and workforce development, given what we're seeing in AI right now. And I think for a lot of our listeners, when we're talking about fraud detection, kind of the classic use cases, drug development across the life sciences space, they might have a really clear idea of what maybe the answer to that question looks like in those contexts. But it might be more difficult for them in agriculture to really imagine, especially because we tend to think of agriculture. Maybe there's automation and maybe there are robotics, of course. But we tend to just think of that traditionally from the agricultural revolution as primarily human work. And that's not entirely the case. And we're looking forward to you bringing some nuance to that attitude. Maybe just starting off at a high level, how are you seeing AI change the way we think about human talent and workforce development, especially in biological and agricultural manufacturing?

**Kun He** (3:46)
Sure. Yeah. First of all, I want to clarify the question. Sure. Why I ask you whether you ever have a biologist on your show. The reason is I want to see whether we ever discuss this AI from the evolution angle. I understand the question you were asking is basically, it's reflecting some of the anxiety that a regular person will feel, the flat or flee kind of reaction when you feel like, oh, it's a totally new technology. Are we going to be replaced? I think that's the deeper questions you were trying to ask.

**Matthew DeMello** (4:19)
I think no matter the context, that's a very, very human fear. It goes back to mortality.
At the end of the day, if we're getting existential about it, yes, we can all be replaced. But just keeping the context to AI, I think it's a little bit of that. That being said, we've had a lot of conversations on the show just touching on the general questions. I think since even the dawn of ChatGPT and LLMs, or maybe the LLM explosion that we've seen over the past three years, especially for our executive audience, I think there's a lot of confidence. And I think the audience has gotten the message that we're going to see a transfer of responsibilities. We're going to see, especially in the short term, human beings have an elevated sense of responsibility and higher order level tasks on their plate. But even then, I mean, yeah, if there's some clarity, I can give you that fear. I'm not exactly a philosopher myself, but happy to touch on any human fears that do you think can illuminate the conversation.