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Proof of Corn

proofofcorn.com

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Re: Proof of Corn

#171

Post by 9dev »

progval wrote: post #163
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…

Anthropic tried that with a vending machine. The Claude instance managing it ended up ordering tungsten cubes and selling them at a loss. https://www.anthropic.com/research/project-vend-1

> the plausible, strange, not-too-distant future in which AI models are autonomously running things in the real economy.

A plot line in Ray Naylers great book The Mountain in the Sea that plays in a plausible, strange, not-too-distant future, is that giant fish trawler fleet are run by AI connected to the global markets, fully autonomously. They relentlessly rip every last fish from the ocean, driven entirely by the goal of maximising profits at any cost.

The world is coming along just nicely.

Re: Proof of Corn

#173

Post by incr_me »

lbrito wrote: post #89

This is lopsided. Technology promised to remove drudgery from our lives, and now we're seeing experiments that automate all the easy, air-conditioned decision making while still delegating the toil to humans Unequivocally awful

Awful indeed! Turns out most of our jobs have consisted of easy, air-conditioned decision making. We're going to have to find another secret handshake with productive capitalists if we want to ensure our continued allotment of the spoils of global exploitation of the toilers.

Re: Proof of Corn

#174

Post by brookst »

cevn wrote: post #123
santadays wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I think this is the new turing test. Once it's been passed we will have AGI and all the Sam Altmans of the world will be proven correct. (This isn't a perfect test obviously, but neither was the turing test) If it fails to pass we w…

I think once we get off LLM's and find something that more closely maps to how humans think, which is still not known afaik. So either never or once the brain is figured out.

This is where it’s a mistake to conflate sentience and intelligence. We don’t need to figure out sentience, just intelligence.

Re: Proof of Corn

#175

Post by dghlsakjg »

nonethewiser wrote: post #54

You can lease 5 acres in Iowa for $1370? Per month I guess? In which case it will be $1370 * m. Not clear from here: https://proofofcorn.com/

A quick search of actual data shows that farmland suitable for row crops sells for ~$11k per acre so a 5 acre area would be around $55k. If the market rate for that type of land was $1,370 per month, that comes to a rate of return near 30% yearly (assuming leases are yearly, not seasonal)![0]

I dug a little deeper and found this study showing cash rental rates per acre per year ranging from $215 to $295.[1] So it actually looks like Claude got this one right.

Of course I know nothing about renting farmland, but if you ask to rent 5 acres the average farm size is in 300+ acre region, the land owners might tell you to get lost or pony up. A little bit like asking Amazon to give you enterprise rates for a single small EC2 instance.

[0] https://farmland.card.iastate.edu/overview [1] https://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/wholefarm/pdf/c2-10.p...

Re: Proof of Corn

#176

Post by kitsune1 »

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…

[dead]

Re: Proof of Corn

#177

Post by tootie »

treis wrote: post #6

It's cute but it seems like it's mostly going to come down to hiring a person to grow corn. Pretty cool that an AI can (sort of) do that autonomously but it's not quite the spirit of the challenge.

It's like I can't grow corn, but I can buy corn. That's not the same thing. I can also write code to order corn for me, provided I supply it with a credit card and pay the bill. That is also not very interesting.

Incidentally I clicked through to this guy's blog and found his predictions for 2025 and he was 0 for 13: https://avc.xyz/what-will-happen-in-2025-1

Re: Proof of Corn

#179

Post by topaz0 »

9dev wrote: post #171
progval wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anthropic tried that with a vending machine. The Claude instance managing it ended up ordering tungsten cubes and selling them at a loss. https://www.anthropic.com/research/project-vend-1

> the plausible, strange, not-too-distant future in which AI models are autonomously running things in the real economy. A plot line in Ray Naylers great book The Mountain in the Sea that plays in a plausible, strange, not-too-distant future, is that giant fish trawler fleet are run by AI connected to the global markets, fully autonomously. They relentlessly rip every last fish from the ocean, driven entirely by the…

They also enslave human workers to do all the manual labor.

Re: Proof of Corn

#180

Post by paxys »

"AI can't grow corn."

"Hey AI, draft an email asking someone to grow corn. See, AI can grow corn!"

This project is neat in itself, sure, but I feel the author is wayyy missing the point of the original thought.

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