The U.S. poultry industry should adopt artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technologies now or risk falling behind others who are already leveraging these tools, explained Aidan Connolly, President, AgriTech Capital LLC. Leadership must own AI adoptionConnolly emphasized that AI adoption must be owned by CEOs and boards, not delegated to IT departments. With AI adoption, the workforce will shift from manual roles to positions requiring AI expertise, such as digital farm managers, AI-savvy nutritionists, supply chain strategists and ethics managers for AI systems. Several AI-powered solutions are already being used in the poultry industry, such as computer vision systems to estimate flock weights, robots to move birds around in houses and camera-based systems to track individual bird behavior. During the question-and-answer session of presentation, an audience member asked if the poultry industry has a moral obligation to provide employment, citing humanity and noting that many workers prefer routine work and may not adapt to creative, AI-based roles.