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Proof of Corn

proofofcorn.com

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Re: Proof of Corn

#311

Post by bethekidyouwant »

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

People prompted the vending machine to stock tungsten cubes because it’s funny. Also tungsten cubes are cool.

Re: Proof of Corn

#312

Post by krzat »

doug713705 wrote: post #238
brookst wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is there intelligence without sentience ?

We have those eureka moments, whene good idea appears out of nowhere. I would say this "nowhere" is intelligence without sentience.

Re: Proof of Corn

#313

Post by greedo »

9rx wrote: post #301
greedo wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps your soil is more fertile in that area? It's not uncommon to see a 25% drop in acreage on the border of fields due to trees, end rows etc.

25% would be quite extreme. There is some evidence of that much loss on individual rows being possible, but not the entire headland. 10% is considered to be more typical, which works out to be around a 4% loss across the entire piece. Which is well within the normal range of field variability, so it is ultimately not noticeable. Of course, if it were a 5 acre field, with some assumptions about its shape, we'd only be…

Well the smaller a field, the larger proportion of end rows. And I was referring to end rows, not the entire field. A 5 acre field is pretty small, and my rough guess is that between end rows, rows shaded by trees and close to water sources, the loss could be pretty significant. Now if you're talking 500-1000 acres, end rows are nothing in the scheme of things.

Re: Proof of Corn

#314

Post by 6510 »

The discussion is actually more funny than it would seem. Corn existed long before humans. We aren't required for growing corn, the corn grows all by it self. It's like saying I grow your hair after serving you a cup of your favorite tea. We do know what people refer to when they say they are growing corn. When AI grows the corn we also know what is referred to.

Re: Proof of Corn

#315

Post by 9rx »

greedo wrote: post #313
9rx wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25% would be quite extreme. There is some evidence of that much loss on individual rows being possible, but not the entire headland. 10% is considered to be more typical, which works out to be around a 4% loss across the entire piece. Which is well within the normal range of field variability, so it is ultimately not noticeable. Of course, if it were a 5 acre field, with some assumptions about its shape, we'd only be…

Well the smaller a field, the larger proportion of end rows. And I was referring to end rows, not the entire field. A 5 acre field is pretty small, and my rough guess is that between end rows, rows shaded by trees and close to water sources, the loss could be pretty significant. Now if you're talking 500-1000 acres, end rows are nothing in the scheme of things.

> And I was referring to end rows, not the entire field.

As was I. 10% loss is considered typical, but that amortizes to only ~4% and ~2% for two and five acre fields respectively. So you suggest that 2% is "terrible" and "pretty significant", but I say it is essentially imperceptible from normal field variability. If you pick a random five acre plot out in the middle of a 100 acre field, there is a decent chance that it will 2% or more below the field average too.

Re: Proof of Corn

#316

Post by NewsaHackO »

LunaSea wrote: post #294
LoganDark wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they're saying that businesses getting unsolicited offers from the LLM is similar to regular people getting unsolicited offers from businesses.

Cost and scale aren't the same though

Correct, this is one guy doing an experiment sending a dozen emails out, and the other is ad companies sending to millions of people.

Re: Proof of Corn

#317

Post by greedo »

9rx wrote: post #315
greedo wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the smaller a field, the larger proportion of end rows. And I was referring to end rows, not the entire field. A 5 acre field is pretty small, and my rough guess is that between end rows, rows shaded by trees and close to water sources, the loss could be pretty significant. Now if you're talking 500-1000 acres, end rows are nothing in the scheme of things.

> And I was referring to end rows, not the entire field. As was I. 10% loss is considered typical, but that amortizes to only ~4% and ~2% for two and five acre fields respectively. So you suggest that 2% is "terrible" and "pretty significant", but I say it is essentially imperceptible from normal field variability. If you pick a random five acre plot out in the middle of a 100 acre field, there is a decent chance tha…

Are you seeing this with corn or other crops? I don't have any experience with anything but corn and beans.

Re: Proof of Corn

#318

Post by FarmerPotato »

nvader wrote: post #3

This is a very intriguing experiment! I'll be following along, and I'm curious what kind of harness you'll put on TOP of Claude code to avoid it stalling out on "We have planted 16/20 fields so far, and irrigated 9/16. Would you like me to continue?" I'd also like to know what your own "constitution" is regarding human oversight and intervention. Presumably you wouldn't want your investment to go down the drain if Cl…

21 people came to your city last year. 117 died of starvation. Rats ate 2651 bushels of corn. How many acres would you like to plant this year?

--Hammurabi

Re: Proof of Corn

#319

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Proof of Corn

#320

Post by pegasus »

pixl97 wrote: post #130
embedding-shape wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These experiments always seems to end up requiring the hand-holding of a human at top, seemingly breaking down the idea behind the experiment in the first place. Seems better to spend the time and energy on finding better ways for AI to work hand-in-hand with the user, empowering them, rather than trying to find the areas where we could replace humans with as little quality degradation as possible. That whole part fe…

>ather than trying to find the areas where we could replace humans with as little quality degradation as possible The particular problem here is it is very likely that the easiest people to replace with AI are the ones making the most money and doing the least work. Needless to say those people are going to fight a lot harder to remain employed than the average lower level person has political capital to accomplish.…

> the humans involved don't want AGI, they want ASI

They are virtually synonymous. After all, a computer already exceeds human capabilities in some areas (for example, numeric computation). If (hypothetically, I don't believe this is possible) they would be able to achieve human-level performance in all other areas, they would already have achieved ASI as well.

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