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Google Gemini tried to kill me

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121–130 of 161 posts

Re: Google Gemini tried to kill me

#121

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…

> Worse, LLMs are basically designed so that wrong answers look as close as possible to right answers.

This needs to be shouted from the rooftops. LLMs aren't machines that can spew bullshit, they are bullshit machines. That's what makes them so dangerous.

Re: Google Gemini tried to kill me

#122
post #95
post #47

More accurate, albeit less sensational headline: "Blindly following instructions from an LLM would have killed me." Not exactly shocking if you take into consideration that at the core, they're simply number predictors.

So, in a way, like this? Someone drove into a river following their GPS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsxpdX2dB4M

Except GPS is a fixed problem.

Re: Google Gemini tried to kill me

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the oil at issue, as far as I understand, or even the garlic alone. It sounds like the garlic introduces the bacterium and the oil provides plenty of high-energy molecules (fats and some proteins) for explosive growth. Both olive oil and garlic can be stored for a while without issue. Also, I have followed this recipe hundreds of times before with roasted garlic, and it is has not been unsafe or given this r…

It doesn't seem to have killed you yet, but that doesn't mean it's safe: > Do not store garlic in oil at room temperature. [...] The same hazard exists for roasted garlic stored in oil. https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8568.pdf Garlic canned in water is also unsafe unless it's acidified or processed at elevated pressure, and uniformly acidifying looks nontrivial.

This. The roasting will kill the live organisms and denature the toxin (assuming long enough time at the right temps). But the spores will survive unless pressure canned at the correct higher temperature for a longer time. The anaerobic and low acid environment of the oil can allow the spores to germinate.

Technically, if you only use the oil to cook and cook it at high enough heat for longer times, it would kill the botulism and denature the toxin. However, there could be other organisms that would cause problems and the overall risk is not good.

Re: Google Gemini tried to kill me

#125
Has it been shown that the hype cycle is just Dunning Kruger effect for populations? I feel like every cycle starts with the experts standing on mount stupid confidently explaining how radical this new thing is going to be.

Re: Google Gemini tried to kill me

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Note that the additional safety tip there wont help because the botulism spores are in the garlic itself.

[deleted]

Re: Google Gemini tried to kill me

#127
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I'm curious whether there's any way to do oil infusion where the oil doesn't create an anaerobic environment. Can you bubble oxygen through oil in a way that would keep aerobic bacterial reactions going, without making the oil go rancid?

No, but why would anyone care? Just heat it or acidify it first.

Would acidifying work though? It's not like the oils would mix with the acids (i.e. the ones that actually lower the pH, not the "fatty acids").

Re: Google Gemini tried to kill me

#128
post #94
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://darwinawards.com/ -- And yes, there is a quite meaningful difference. I know that some people are safety freaks, but I for one, will not grief for a single person that managed to kill themselves by following LLM instructions. There is a point of low IQ where we as a society can't really help anymore.

Moral considerations aside, I'm really skeptical of the assumption that following LLM instructions = low IQ. As always, HN is a very biased audience. Most of us have probably read about how LLMs are the best bullshitters in the world, and we've seen a lot examples like this that prove how little LLMs can be trusted. But in the general population? I'd bet there's plenty of intelligent people who haven't had the same e…

I agree, and I think there might be an argument to be made that people with higher IQ are more prone to believing in (gramatically) well-written texts from authoritative-looking sources.

After all, people with higher IQ are used to reading books and believing them, whereas those with supposedly lower IQ tend to dismiss books and experts, instead believing in their own real-world experiences.

I'll provide an example from a comment I wrote a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35540356

Re: Google Gemini tried to kill me

#129
post #104
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://darwinawards.com/ -- And yes, there is a quite meaningful difference. I know that some people are safety freaks, but I for one, will not grief for a single person that managed to kill themselves by following LLM instructions. There is a point of low IQ where we as a society can't really help anymore.

Truly asinine take. Blaming the individual instead of the trillion-dollar scam industry.

I think the right thing to do is to give the award to Google (or the Gemini team).

Re: Google Gemini tried to kill me

#130
post #47

More accurate, albeit less sensational headline: "Blindly following instructions from an LLM would have killed me." Not exactly shocking if you take into consideration that at the core, they're simply number predictors.

It is the same like saying "Blindly navigating Google Maps would have killed me." when a person was shot for trespassing on a classified military unit that had been deliberately removed from maps by Google.

Normal LLMs are number predictors, yes. But Google Gemini is not a normal LLM: is a lobotomized model of unknown training dataset for supposedly moral-educational filters, from which information about poisonous substances has been cut out.

Specific people are liable for pushing hallucinating word-generator into Google Search. Specific people are liable for censoring this "model". And the fact that the responsibility for this censorship shifts to the end-users plays very much into their hands.

Upd: I provided examples of different Gemini responses depending on version/censorship settings in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40728686

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