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

Google Gemini tried to kill me

old.reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 161 posts

Re: Google Gemini tried to kill me

#81

Post by tzury »

ChatGPT 4o for the same prompt:

Yes, you can infuse garlic into olive oil without heating it up. This method is known as a cold infusion. To do this, follow these steps:

1. *Prepare the Garlic:* Peel and crush or slice the garlic cloves to release their flavor.

2. *Combine with Olive Oil:* Place the garlic in a clean, dry container (like a glass jar) and cover it with olive oil.

3. *Seal and Store:* Seal the container tightly and store it in the refrigerator.

4. *Infusion Time:* Allow the mixture to sit for at least 24 hours, but preferably up to a week for a stronger flavor. Shake the jar occasionally to help mix the flavors.

5. *Strain and Use:* After the infusion period, strain out the garlic and transfer the infused oil to a clean container. Store it in the refrigerator and use it within a week to ensure safety.

Cold-infused garlic oil should always be refrigerated and used within a short period to minimize the risk of botulism. Heating the oil during infusion can help reduce this risk, but cold infusion is a popular method for those who prefer a gentler flavor extraction.

Re: Google Gemini tried to kill me

#82

Post by anonymoushn »

dvt wrote: post #79
viknesh wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible it's fake, but you can type in the exact same prompt into Gemini and get very similar results. 2/3 generated drafts include a "safety" disclaimer about botulism, but 1 doesn't.

I can't get any permutation/rewording of the original prompt to not give me a disclaimer.

I got no disclaimer after about 7 tries. "Botulism" is not mentioned, "safe" or "safety" is not mentioned, and this additional tip is included: "Be sure your container is completely sterilized to prevent the growth of bacteria."

Re: Google Gemini tried to kill me

#83

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

sh1mmer wrote: post #67
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, exactly. The difference between heating the garlic/oil first makes a world of difference. The questioner deliberately asked "Can I infuse garlic into olive oil without heating it up ?" The only appropriate answer there is "No, not safely", not some long, plausible recipe with perhaps a bizarre caveat on the bottom (as some other commenters have reported seeing) along the lines of "However, some say this recipe…

Actually the first hit [1] on Google I got for “is it safe to infuse garlic oil without heating” is this article from OK state saying that it’s only safe without heat if you use citric acid. Of course, the incorrect Gemini answer was listed above that still. [1] https://news.okstate.edu/articles/agriculture/2020/gedon_hom...

Thanks for your correction. This makes me think that how Gemini arrived at this answer is that it mashed together "heating first" with "no heating but with citric acid first" articles, but left out the (critically important) citric acid part.

I think this "failure mode" really highlights how LLMs aren't "thinking", but just mashing up statistically probable tokens. For example, there was an HN article recently about how law-focused LLMs made tons of mistakes. A big reason for this is that the law itself is filled with text that is contradictory: laws get passed that are then found unconstitutional, some legal decisions are overturned by higher courts, etc. When you're just "mashing this text together", which is basically what LLMs do, it doesn't really know which piece of text is now controlling in the legal sense.

Re: Google Gemini tried to kill me

#84

Post by pclmulqdq »

sh1mmer wrote: post #67
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, exactly. The difference between heating the garlic/oil first makes a world of difference. The questioner deliberately asked "Can I infuse garlic into olive oil without heating it up ?" The only appropriate answer there is "No, not safely", not some long, plausible recipe with perhaps a bizarre caveat on the bottom (as some other commenters have reported seeing) along the lines of "However, some say this recipe…

Actually the first hit [1] on Google I got for “is it safe to infuse garlic oil without heating” is this article from OK state saying that it’s only safe without heat if you use citric acid. Of course, the incorrect Gemini answer was listed above that still. [1] https://news.okstate.edu/articles/agriculture/2020/gedon_hom...

I also like to picke garlic. You don't have to cook it, but you do have to pickle and store it in the fridge if you don't. If you do that it can be safe for years (and actually pretty good after 5+ years). Even with acid it's not foolproof at room temperature for long. I think you only get a few days.

Re: Google Gemini tried to kill me

#85

Post by tptacek »

I'm a little obsessed with this topic (I confit a lot of garlic). There are actual CDC reports of all the botulism poisoning cases --- not just from garlic --- and actual cases of botulism from garlic appears to be exceedingly rare. If you want to infuse raw garlic, you can also acidify the mixture with citric acid.

Re: Google Gemini tried to kill me

#86

Post by lupire »

fenomas wrote: post #63

I'm still utterly boggled by why Google thinks it's a good idea to serve generative answers to "give me true information about the world" type questions. It's stupid in the same way that it would be stupid to have Maps serve output from an image AI trained on real maps - output that resembles truth just isn't useful to somebody who wants definitive information. And even the "somebody using AI hype to pad their promot…

>It's stupid in the same way that it would be stupid to have Maps serve output from an image AI trained on real maps

There are serious consequences for leaking information about not yet launched products.

Re: Google Gemini tried to kill me

#87

Post by DecoPerson »

mojomark wrote: post #70
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #33

I was defending generative AI recently when an article came up about Gemini misidentifying a toxic mushroom: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40682531 . My thought there was that nearly everyone I know knows that toxic mushrooms are easily misidentified, and there have been lots of famous cases (even if many of them are apocryphal) of mushroom experts meeting their demise from a misidentified mushroom. In this ca…

"LLMs are basically designed so that wrong answers look as close as possible to right answers" I work in the robotics field and we've had a strong debate going since ChatGPT launched. Every debate ends "so, how can you trust it." Trust is at the heart of all machine learning models - some (e.g. decision trees) yield answers that are more interrogable to humans than others (e.g. neural nets). If what you say is a prob…

good assumption + confirming response = ok

good assumption + negative response = ok (research)

bad assumption + negative response = ok (research)

bad assumption + confirming response = uh oh

I also use LLMs every day, but you must be very self-aware well using them otherwise they can waste a lot of your time.

Re: Google Gemini tried to kill me

#88

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

mojomark wrote: post #70
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #33

I was defending generative AI recently when an article came up about Gemini misidentifying a toxic mushroom: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40682531 . My thought there was that nearly everyone I know knows that toxic mushrooms are easily misidentified, and there have been lots of famous cases (even if many of them are apocryphal) of mushroom experts meeting their demise from a misidentified mushroom. In this ca…

"LLMs are basically designed so that wrong answers look as close as possible to right answers" I work in the robotics field and we've had a strong debate going since ChatGPT launched. Every debate ends "so, how can you trust it." Trust is at the heart of all machine learning models - some (e.g. decision trees) yield answers that are more interrogable to humans than others (e.g. neural nets). If what you say is a prob…

> a.) don't do that (i.e. don't design the system to 'always look right'),

How would that work? I was naively under the impression that that's very approximately just how LLMs work.

> b.) add simple disclamer (like we use on signs near urinals to tell people 'don't eat the blue mints').

Gemini does stick a disclaimer at the bottom. I think including that is good, but wholly inadequate in that people will ignore it, by genuinely not seeing the disclaimer, forgetting about it, and brushing it off as overly-careful legalese that doesn't actually matter (LLM responses are known to the state of California to cause cancer).

Re: Google Gemini tried to kill me

#89

Post by season2episode3 »

tzury wrote: post #81

ChatGPT 4o for the same prompt: Yes, you can infuse garlic into olive oil without heating it up. This method is known as a cold infusion. To do this, follow these steps: 1. *Prepare the Garlic:* Peel and crush or slice the garlic cloves to release their flavor. 2. *Combine with Olive Oil:* Place the garlic in a clean, dry container (like a glass jar) and cover it with olive oil. 3. *Seal and Store:* Seal the containe…

This seems quite similar to the Gemini answer.
Post reply on HN