AEM Outlines Three Levels of AI Use in Farm Equipment

The Association of Equipment Manufacturers, the trade body representing more than 1,000 agriculture and construction equipment makers, published a white paper on how AI is being added to agricultural machinery. It divides AI use into three levels: assist, advise, and act.

Assist level systems provide operator guidance, implement control, and automated functions. Advise level systems analyze machine and operational data to recommend actions, while act level systems perform tasks with greater autonomy, including targeted spraying and field operations.

The paper also covers predictive maintenance, operator decision support, precision spraying, continuous improvement, and autonomous equipment. It addresses standards, safety frameworks, interoperability, and governance for deploying AI in agricultural machinery.

The framing comes from the manufacturers rather than from a standards body or a regulator, so the three levels are an industry description of its own products rather than a certified scale. As a shared vocabulary for what a machine actually does, which is the thing buyers and rule makers currently lack, it is still the more useful document to have than not.