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A comment on Family poisoned after using AI-generated mushroom identification book. Parent comment

Re:Family poisoned after using AI-generated mushroom identif... by tptacek on Friday August 16, 2024 @04:02PM (#41269846)
The fact that these people claim mushroom poisoning but don't say what kind of mushrooms they were looking for makes you... more? less? willing to buy the story?

They mentioned morels, which are sort of plausible (dates excepted) since false morels aren't going to kill you. What kind of mushroom would they be hunting in late July where their poisoning wouldn't be actually-newsworthy?

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Re:Family poisoned after using AI-generated mushroom identif... by bee_rider on Friday August 16, 2024 @04:17PM (#41269978)
They might be novices who got the book as the start of their search, right? Since it could have any type of AI hallucinated mushroom with any type of AI hallucinated description. Are there really no non-deadly mushrooms in the UK in the late July?

They don’t necessarily have to be plausible or near misses or anything, right?

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Re:Family poisoned after using AI-generated mushroom identif... by pflenker on Friday August 16, 2024 @04:08PM (#41269915)
I really have no opinion here at all. I just wanted to point out that the fact that it’s no morel season in the UK is no evidence in either direction since the post doesn’t claim that the poisoning was due to morels.

I saw a comparable post the other day about an LLM proposing to mix garlic and oil in a way that would have produced a poisonous fluid, which the author recognized before trying. I found that story, and I find this one, at least plausible.

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