There's been a spike in cases of people eating death cap mushrooms in California this year, and I would bet almost anything that LLM adoption has something to do with it.
Mushroom hunting with LLMs: what can go wrong?
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Re: Mushroom hunting with LLMs: what can go wrong?
#32Giving the impossibly high standards people here have for identifying a mushroom, it’s a wonder that they would eat a mushroom at all. You may not trust an LLM, but how would you even trust yourself? Who would you ever trust?
Why would you want to eat a random wild mushroom so badly in the first place? We're not starving, wandering through the forest for anything which might be edible. Entire regulated industries exist around selling and growing human food grade mushrooms.
Curiosity is great. Take a picture, enjoy what you find in nature. At the same time, stay safe and resist the urge to throw a random mushroom down your throat just because you might be able to unless you're willing to put the work in to make doing so reasonably safe. If you do reaaaaallly want to try a mushroom you can't find for consumption otherwise then it's worth the heavy amount of verification. 99.9999% of mushrooms people normally care about eating can more easily be found without foraging and self-identifying though.
Re: Mushroom hunting with LLMs: what can go wrong?
#33What are the error rates for a human experienced/trained in spotting mushrooms?
(isn't that the standard proponents use for autonomous driving?)
Re: Mushroom hunting with LLMs: what can go wrong?
#34I think the more important question is: have people really run out of interesting flavors at their local stores and restaurants, that they are so obsessed with eating things they find growing on the ground? I’ll never understand mushroom culture.
Some mushrooms like chanterelles can't be reliably farmed, and are quite tasty! I love being able to spend a day hiking and coming back with a meal.
Morels are starting to make good progress in being farmed.
But, I still enjoy the hunt every spring.
Re: Mushroom hunting with LLMs: what can go wrong?
#35the interesting question is: what is the barrier we need to cross to trust LLMs with stuff like this? we'll probably cross the barrier but I'd have a hard time setting a true percentage success boundary
Around the same time the LLM also faces an existential risk when its advice is wrong. Not trusting my life to an “intelligence” that has nothing to lose.
Sometimes the things that people say, says more about themselves than the thing they said.
If the only reason you give advice is predicated on the transactional value of that action, I think you've given up on acting ethically.
While to some extent we all are motivated by some abstract transactional value, I think immediately perceiving and reducing everything to a surivivalist, transactional mentality is an empty, cynical existence.
Re: Mushroom hunting with LLMs: what can go wrong?
#36Chanterelles and false chanterelles are especially tricky. They fruit at the same time in the same areas. I have to do a 2nd pass after I have washed and dried my haul.
https://www.mushroom-appreciation.com/wp-content/uploads/202...
Re: Mushroom hunting with LLMs: what can go wrong?
#37What are the error rates for a human experienced/trained in spotting mushrooms? (isn't that the standard proponents use for autonomous driving?)
I never touch a mushroom I am not 100% certain is safe. So far I’ve had a 100% success rate in not poisoning myself or others. Wouldn’t recommend trusting an LLM either.
Re: Mushroom hunting with LLMs: what can go wrong?
#38I think the more important question is: have people really run out of interesting flavors at their local stores and restaurants, that they are so obsessed with eating things they find growing on the ground? I’ll never understand mushroom culture.
Are you this actively shitty towards all hobbies you don't also enjoy?
People have been foraging for mushrooms for literally thousands of years, but mushroom cultivation is pretty recent, and the overwhelming majority of edible species have not yet been reliably cultivated.
Are you ignorant of where those interesting flavors come from (indeed, are discovered)?
This has strong "why should we care about farms? People get everything they need from the store" vibes.
Re: Mushroom hunting with LLMs: what can go wrong?
#39Ha! I just had a very interesting conversation with ChatGPT about a mushroom that I found in my front lawn. I am 99% sure it was an edible oyster mushroom which included analysis the of the size, growing substrate (dead ash tree root which turns out to be a useful identifying characteristic -- I learned a lot about mycology in a short time). Plus I don't use fertilizers, herbicide, pesticides, fungicides (obviously)…
oysters are pretty safe
Re: Mushroom hunting with LLMs: what can go wrong?
#40I think the more important question is: have people really run out of interesting flavors at their local stores and restaurants, that they are so obsessed with eating things they find growing on the ground? I’ll never understand mushroom culture.
Taste aside, foraging in the woods--whether for mushrooms, berries or herbs--unlocks some atavistic response inside me. It feels deeply true to my nature as an animal, and is very rewarding in a way that surprised me when I first did it.