My heart sank a little when I heard. We knew it was coming. Baseball will be little less human and a little more mechanical.

I’m talking about Major League Baseball adopting the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System for next season. Teams will be allowed to challenge a ball-strike call two times in a game. The result will be shown on the video scoreboard, and the game will move on with the correct call.

The ABS Challenge System has been used in the Minor Leagues for a couple of years. “Hawkeye” technology uses radar to create a perfect strike zone for each hitter. Human umps range from very good to bad. None are perfect.

It’s a step towards robot umpires.

The obvious question is if Hawkeye is 100 percent right, why wouldn’t you let it call the whole game?

A home plate ump would still be in place to indicate the call, watch the pitch clock, and check his phone for texts from his wife.

I’m probably in the minority. But I prefer human beings to robots, despite all our species’ flaws. Flaws and imperfections are defining traits of humanity. Striving to overcome them and be better is a big part of life.

Baseball’s survived with human umps for more than a century. MLB adopted instant replay in 2008. You might call me a baseball “purist” or something worse. But I’m still not a fan of that.

It seems weird when I’m at a game, and suddenly, everybody stops and stands around. Everybody stands around while a video umpire analyzes umpteen camera angles. Sometimes there is a microscopic difference between safe and out.

The video ump is in a booth somewhere, not on the field. Layers of technology that didn’t exist when Babe Ruth played make ABS and video replay possible.

I get why fans would like this. I remember watching Game 6 of the 1985 World Series. Don Denkinger famously blew a call at first. Everybody watching the replay at home knew within seconds he clearly missed it.

It possibly changed the outcome of that game and the whole series. Denkinger received death threats. In the strange way celebrity works in this country, years later he was signing photos of the blown call at card shows.

Would the world be better off if Denkinger had been overruled by a video ump?

That’s a discussion over coffee sometime.

So, I have this bias toward human beings over things that originate from machines. At the same time, I look at the world my father was born to in 1908. I’m not that crazy as to want to go back to when everything on the farm was powered by human or horse muscle. I like my indoor plumbing, tractors, and Galaxy S22 smart phone.

Here on the farm, I give a small nod toward human beings in my own work. I steer my tractor. Auto-steer has been around for a while now. I assume most acres farmed are mechanically steered. Like robot umpires, this is made possible by layers of technology that are remarkable, the result of generations of science.

It wouldn’t take much for me to set up auto-steer on our tractors. Maybe I’m being a little lazy in not doing that. Friends tell me I will love that when I do. It would also avoid the slurve in my rows when I glance at my phone while I’m planting.

Auto-steer is just the beginning of the things technology can do in the field. There are smarter farmers than me using satellites to collect data on every acre. Tillage is overlaid with seed variety overlaid with pesticides overlaid with yields, plus soil type, weather, and things I’m not thinking of.

The decisions I make scratching on note paper at the kitchen table can be made on an iPad using more information than I can hold in my head.

John Deere recently had an advertising campaign with this theme: “Machines that think like you do.” I sent that out to a few friends. One of them replied that my tractor would want to go to the Brewery.

This mostly light-hearted discussion of man and machine does dip it’s toe into the ocean that stretches in front of us. There are escalating reports on the potential of Artificial Intelligence. That is potential, good. And that is potential, bad.

AI combined with robots means we are almost certainly on the precipice of a new world. Historically, the Industrial Revolution is the nearest comparable we have. That changed everything economically and culturally. The world we live in today is the result.

It’s easy now to not know the tremendous churning of society that took place with the Industrial Revolution. There were winners and losers. There were some big winners, as many of the massively wealthy families of today grew from there.

What does it look like when robots with AI “minds” can do everything?

Self-driving trucks might be the first visible step in this revolution. 1.7 million truck drivers could be replaced in a decade.

Sooner than that, you’ll see less farmers in their fields. Autonomous tractors exist now. I wouldn’t be surprised to see one next spring. Unlike truck drivers, that will not immediately displace farmers. It will ultimately reduce the need for hiring good help.

There are all kinds of projections flying around now about which human activities can be performed by AI. If you were a science fiction reader like me, you’ve thought about these things.

Stephen Hawking, the scientist, considers it a possibility that a super artificial intelligence could lead to the extinction of our species. Well, let’s hope not.

Until then, I guess it’s possible that AI could write a bi-weekly column that appears in a couple southern Minnesota newspapers. It could be about farming and small-town life, with forays into baseball and politics. You could even set it to be Pulitzer-winning quality writing.

But then, what would I do?

I’d probably sit around and eat more snacks. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll continue to steer my column.

— Randy Krzmarzick farms on the home place west of Sleepy Eye, where he lives with his wife, Pam.