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Proof of Corn

proofofcorn.com

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Re: Proof of Corn

#131

Post by NewJazz »

jdthedisciple wrote: post #41
ppchain wrote: post #22

The point they seem to be making is that AI can "orchestrate" the real world even if it can't interact physically. I can definitely believe that in 2026 someone at their computer with access to money can send the right emails and make the right bank transfers to get real people to grow corn for you. However even by that metric I don't see how Claude is doing that. Seth is the one researching the suppliers "with the h…

So Seth, as presumably a non-farmer, is doing professional farmer's work all on his own without prior experience? Is that what you're saying?

Anyone can be a farmer. I've got veggies in my garden. Making a profit year after year is much much harder.

Re: Proof of Corn

#132

Post by recursive »

dsjoerg wrote: post #78

"Can AI grow corn?" Let's step back. "there's a gap between digital and physical that AI can't cross" Can intelligence of ANY kind, artificial or natural, grow corn? Do physical things? Your brain is trapped in its skull. How does it do anything physical? With nerves, of course. Connected to muscle. It's sending and receiving signals, that's all its doing! The brain isn't actually doing anything! The history of human…

I can't tell which side you're arguing here. But if the AI was strapped onto a roomba that rolled around and planted, watered and harvested the corn, I would count that.

Re: Proof of Corn

#133

Post by qayxc »

dsjoerg wrote: post #97
ranprieur wrote: post #87

> AI doesn't need to drive a tractor. It needs to orchestrate the systems and people who do. Pure dystopia.

What work DO you want the humans to do? The endless complaining and goalposting shifting is exhausting

The people already doing this work today already do exactly that.

There's no goalpost shifting here - it's l'art pour l'art at its finest. It'd be introducing an agent where no additional agent agent is required in the first place, i.e. telling a farmer how to do their job, when they already now how to and do it in the first place.

No one needs an LLM if you can just lease some land and then tell some person to tend to it, (i.e. doing the actual work). It's baffling to me how out of touch with reality some people are.

Want to grow corn? Take some corn, put it in the ground in your backyard and harvest when it's ready. Been there, done that, not a challenge at all. Want to do it at scale? Lease some land, buy some corn, contract a farmer to till the land, sow the corn, and eventually harvest it. Done. No LLM required. No further knowledge required. Want to know when the best time for each step is? Just look at when other farmers in the area are doing it. Done.

Re: Proof of Corn

#134

Post by programd »

jollyllama wrote: post #55

See also: King Corn [0] - in which two random guys try to grow an acre of corn and learn about industrialized agriculture in the proces. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1112115/

See also: Clarkson's Farm [0], for some of the messy reality of running an actual modern farm in England (though edited for entertainment value). I suspect the current AIs are not quite up to doing this - but I firmly beleive it's only a matter of time.

[0]https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10541088/

Re: Proof of Corn

#135

Post by pixl97 »

kokanee wrote: post #72
nonethewiser wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) You are right and its impressive if he can use AI to bootstrap becoming a farmer 2) Regardless, I think it proves a vastly understated feature of AI: It makes people confident. The AI may be truly informative, or it may hallucinate, or it may simply give mundane, basic advice. Probably all 3 at times. But the fact that it's there ready to assert things without hesitation gives people so much more confidence to act…

I started to write a logical rebuttal, but forget it. This is just so dumb. A guy is paying farmers to farm for him, and using a chatbot to Google everything he doesn't know about farming along the way. You're all brainwashed.

>A guy is paying farmers to farm for him

Family of farmers here.

My family raises hundreds of thousands of chickens a year. They feed, water, and manage the healthcare and building maintenance for the birds. That is it. Baby birds show up in boxes at the start of a season, and trucks show up and take the grown birds once they reach weight.

There is a large faceless company that sends out contracts for a particular value and farmers can decide to take or leave it. There is zero need for human contact on the management side of the process.

At the end of the day there is little difference between a company assigning the work and having a bank account versus an AI following all the correct steps.

Re: Proof of Corn

#136

Post by embedding-shape »

LoganDark wrote: post #105
embedding-shape wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I also don't think it's fair to say there's no point just because there's a person prompting and interpreting the LLM. That happens all the time with real people, too. Yes, what I'm trying to get at, it's much more vital we nail down the "person prompting and interpreting the LLM" part instead of focusing so much on the "autonomous robots doing everything".

I feel you're still missing the point of the experiment... The entire thing was based on how Claude felt empowering -- "I felt like I could do anything with software from my terminal"... It's not at all about autonomous robots... It's about what someone can achieve with the assistance of LLMs, in this case Claude

I think we might have read two different articles.

Re: Proof of Corn

#137

Post by Alupis »

I can't be the only person seriously questioning the "Budget" page the AI created?[1]

The estimate seems to leave out a lot of factors, including irrigation, machinery, the literal seeds, and more. $800 for a "custom operator" for 7 months - I don't believe it. Leasing 5 acres of farmable land (for presumably a year) for less than $1400... I don't believe it.

The humans behind this experiment are going to get very tired of reading "Oh, you're right..." over and over - and likely end up deeply underwater.

[1] https://proofofcorn.com/budget

Re: Proof of Corn

#138

Post by pixl97 »

tekno45 wrote: post #115
LoganDark wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's writing it down, so it's also science.

exactly, its science/research, until you can feed people its not really farming.

>until you can feed people

So if I grow biomass for fuel or feedstock for plastics that's not farming? I'm sure there are a number of people that would argue with you on that.

I'm from the part of the country where there large chunks of land dedicated to experimental grain growing, which is research, and other than labels at the end of crop rows you'd have a difficult time telling it from any other farm.

TL:DR, why are you gatekeeping this so hard?

Re: Proof of Corn

#139

Post by BenoitEssiambre »

futuraperdita wrote: post #98
BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #28

AI CEOs are coming.

AI middle managers are coming. The highest-level corporate authority can and will continue to exist as a person that makes sure the AI systems are running correctly and skim profits off the top of the AI substructure, with the lowest stratum being an underclass precariat doing the hands-on tickets from an AI agent at a continuously adjusted market price for the task.

It could be just an owner or a board or directors at the top. It's possible the CEO will be automated for some companies.

Re: Proof of Corn

#140

Post by snowmobile »

nonethewiser wrote: post #69
jayd16 wrote: post #11

I'm not a huge fan of these experiments that subject the public to your random AI spam. So far it's bothered 10 companies directly with no legal authority to actually follow up with what is requested?

>So far it's bothered 10 companies directly with no legal authority to actually follow up with what is requested? Aren't these companies in the business of leasing land? I dont see how contacting them about leasing land would be spam or bothering them. And I dont really know what you mean by "with no legal authority to actually follow up with what is requested."

I mean, it's probably worse to pretend to be an actual customer, rather than sending some random message. The AI's obviously never going to actually lease any land, so all its doing is convincingly wasting their time. At least landlords are often quite unsympathetic, so it's probably fine to waste their time a bit.
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