Seattle’s AI weed wars: One startup maps them, another zaps them

TerraClear’s new Weed Maps helps farmers identify individual weeds as small as a quarter inch. (TerraClear Photo) The next big test for AI isn’t happening in a data center. Two Seattle-area startups are betting that AI can transform how farmers find and eliminate unwanted plants — one by mapping every weed, the other by zapping them with lasers.