Knowledge, Innovation and Technology in Scientific Research Vol. 6

Agricultural advisory services are being reshaped by digital platforms, data-intensive decision support and, increasingly, artificial intelligence (AI). Yet the dominant progression from conventional extension to digital extension and Agriculture 4.0 has often treated scale, automation and information throughput as proxies for effective advisory performance. This critical narrative review examines whether a more human-centred paradigm is warranted and develops "Extension 5.0" as a provisional analytical concept for advisory systems that combine computational capability with human judgement, social learning, inclusion and accountable governance. Literature published from 1 January 2000 to 7 August 2026 was identified through multidisciplinary and agriculture- and technology-oriented scholarly sources, supplemented by citation searching and DOI-level bibliographic verification. Evidence was synthesised across agricultural economics, extension studies, rural sociology, innovation studies, human-computer interaction and responsible AI. Digital advisory interventions can improve knowledge, recommended-practice adoption and, in some settings, farm performance, but effects are heterogeneous and do not consistently progress from information access to durable welfare gains. Personalisation improves relevance, yet requires reliable local data and does not remove price, credit, labour, infrastructure or risk constraints. Emerging generative AI can lower the cost of translating complex knowledge into dialogue, but hallucination, uncertainty, bias, weak localisation and accountability make unsupervised agronomic advice unsafe as a default institutional model. The strongest case is therefore for hybrid systems in which AI augments advisers and farmers, escalation paths remain available, and design is organised around capability, trust, data rights and contextual fit. Gender, age, literacy, language and resource inequalities are not peripheral adoption variables; they shape who can exercise agency within digital systems. Extension 5.0 is consequently best understood not as a settled technological stage but as a socio-technical design proposition. Its value will depend on evidence that hybrid human-AI systems improve decision quality, equity, resilience and farmer autonomy rather than merely increasing digital contact or automation.