Gemini 3.8 flash told me to eat Entoloma sinuatum!
Mushroom hunting with LLMs: what can go wrong?
61–70 of 81 posts
Re: Mushroom hunting with LLMs: what can go wrong?
#62Ha! 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
Great stereotypical engineer's response.
Re: Mushroom hunting with LLMs: what can go wrong?
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, c…
> 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.
I said nothing of the sort.
Let me give a different example: I would not ride on a plane being flown remotely by a pilot on the ground. But I will ride on a plane with the pilots aboard. I do not necessarily believe the remote pilot would intentionally endanger me, but at the same time they are not facing mortal peril if they screw up. So I would need some other reason to trust them (maybe the remote pilot is a family member).
An AI has nothing to lose for misidentifying a mushroom, and I have my life to lose by trusting it. It can’t even fear for my life on my behalf.
Re: Mushroom hunting with LLMs: what can go wrong?
#64LLMS ARE NON-DETERMINISTIC. DO NOT TRUST THEM WITH LIFE OR DEATH DECISIONS! Seriously, you could die of a near-optimal solution.
Re: Mushroom hunting with LLMs: what can go wrong?
#65LLMS ARE NON-DETERMINISTIC. DO NOT TRUST THEM WITH LIFE OR DEATH DECISIONS! Seriously, you could die of a near-optimal solution.
Humanity is in its "fuck around" phase with LLMs and is going to fly headlong into "find out" soon.
Re: Mushroom hunting with LLMs: what can go wrong?
#66[deleted]
Re: Mushroom hunting with LLMs: what can go wrong?
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, c…
> 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. I said nothing of the sort. Let me give a different example: I would not ride on a plane being flown remotely by a pilot on the ground. But I will ride on a plane with the pilots aboard. I do not necessarily believe the remote pilot would intentionally endanger me, but at the same…
Neither does a radiologist but yet we trust them to read a CT scan. Your relatives can sue if there is malpractice, but in practice, misreading happens, and nobody goes to jail for that.
Everything performs a particular task to the best of its ability and we all accept the level of risk we are willing to tolerate. If machines gain trust from enough sources, it will be accepted.
All I'm saying here is (if you walk back the necessity of having "skin in the game") -- all I'm saying here is, we regularly trust our lives to situations and people we expect to reasonably fulfill a given task. Most of us get in an elevator, or drive in a car, or even just buy food from a store.
Re: Mushroom hunting with LLMs: what can go wrong?
#68the 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
You should never trust any image-based method for mushroom identification.
It is simply not possible to identify mushrooms from image alone, no matter how good your LLM is.
Re: Mushroom hunting with LLMs: what can go wrong?
#69Giving 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?
Honestly, yeah. I wouldn't eat a wild mushroom. The ones in the store are good enough for me.
Re: Mushroom hunting with LLMs: what can go wrong?
#70I 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…
> Are you this actively shitty towards all hobbies you don't also enjoy
No, really just this one. There’s not that many hobbies that have death as an outcome of a minor mistake. For something like free solo climbing, we all understand those guys are nuts and wired different for an incredible high. For mushroom foraging on the other hand, it seems to me like… your reward is a slightly different mushroom flavor?