Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Proof of Corn

proofofcorn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 325 posts

Re: Proof of Corn

#241

Post by gbear605 »

CommieBobDole wrote: post #103

This isn't really an impressive test; growing corn is an extremely well-documented solved problem, the sort of thing that we already know LLMs excel at. An LLM that couldn't reliably tell you what to do at each step of the corn-farming process would be a very poor LLM. This seems like something along the lines of "We know we can use Excel to calculate profit/loss for a Mexican restaurant, but will it work for a Tibet…

It would be impressive in the sense of "Can I ask AI to make me money, and it does so autonomously?", since that's just a free source of money (until other people do it better than you and with more capital). But looking at everything here, I'm dubious that the AI will be able to do that. Farming isn't that high of a margin business, and it's adding a lot of inefficiency and other issues (small acreage, unbelievably low amounts budgeted for labor and machinery, dubious plan for "IoT Sensor Kit", no budget for seeds, etc.).

Re: Proof of Corn

#244

Post by moolcool »

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.

I'm going to use AI to bake a pizza from scratch by making getting Claude Code hit the Dominos Pizza API

Re: Proof of Corn

#245

Post by moolcool »

ranprieur wrote: post #87

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

It seems to me that the person driving the tractor already knows how to grow corn, and the guy behind the laptop typing prompts about corn is might as well be playing Candy Crush.

Re: Proof of Corn

#246

Post by hahahahhaah »

bluGill wrote: post #231
hahahahhaah wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is organic not suatsinable? Not affordable I get. But does organic damage the environment making it hard to farm again? or use inputs that are not sustainable? Genuine question. I am alway curious when a statement goes against conventional wisdom.

Organic allows some really nasty chemicals that build up in the soil because they were used 200 years ago. Organic often substitutes plowing for weed killer - this is both bad for the air - more CO2 - and plowing destroys the soil. if organic finds something good conventional farming adopts it. conventional farming is developed at research universities. Organic is developed in cities by people who know nothing about…

Thanks. Are there good links for this topic?

Re: Proof of Corn

#247

Post by NedF »

wcfrobert wrote: post #211

This exercise is pointless. Of course software can affect the physical world: Google Maps changes traffic patterns; DoorDash teleports takeoff food right to my doorstep; the weather app alters how people dress. This list is un-ending. But these effects are always second-order. Humans are always there in the background bridging the gap between bits and atoms (underpaid delivery drivers in the case of doordash). The mo…

[dead]

Re: Proof of Corn

#248

Post by the_af »

amelius wrote: post #206
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…

What I'd like to see is an AI simulating the economy, so that we can make predictions of what happens if we decrease wealth tax by X% or increasy income tax by Y% (just examples).

> What I'd like to see is an AI simulating the economy, so that we can make predictions of what happens if we decrease wealth tax by X% or increasy income tax by Y% (just examples).

Please tell me you've watched the Mitchell & Webb skit. If not , google "Mitchell Webb kill all the poor" and thank me later.

Edit: also please tell me you know (if not played) of the text adventure "A Mind Forever Voyaging"... without spoiling anything, it's mainly about this topic.

Everything old is new again :)

Post reply on HN