Field guides have always been of mixed quality. But as more and more handbooks of natural object recognition are written with AI chatbots, the chances of readers getting deadly advice is increasing.
Case in point: mushroom hunting.The Mycological Society of New York recently issued a warning On social media, about Amazon and other retailers offering foraging and identification books written by artificial intelligence “Please only buy books by well-known authors and foragers, it can actually mean life or death,” it says in X wrote on it.
It shared another thread in which an X user called such guides “the deadliest AI scam I’ve ever heard,” adding, “The authors are fabricated, their credentials are fabricated, and their Species ID will kill you.”
In Australia recently, three people died after a family lunch. Authorities suspect that death cap mushrooms are to blame for the deaths.The invasive species has reportedly originated in parts of the UK and Ireland but has spread to Australia and North America National Geographic. It is difficult to distinguish it from edible mushrooms.
“North America has hundreds of species of poisonous fungi, several of which are deadly,” Sigrid Jakob, president of the Mycological Society of New York, told 401 Media. “They look similar to popular edible species. False descriptions in the book may mislead people into eating poisonous mushrooms.”
wealth Amazon was reached for comment but did not immediately hear back.the company told protectorHowever, “we take issues like this seriously and are committed to providing a safe shopping and reading experience. We are looking into this matter.”
The problem of books written by AI is likely to intensify in the coming years as more scammers turn to chatbots to generate content to sell. last month, New York Times reported on travel guides written by chatbots.Of the 35 articles submitted to Originality.ai’s artificial intelligence detector, all scored 100, meaning they were almost certainly written by AI
Jonathan Gillham, founder of Originality.ai, warned that such books encourage readers to travel to unsafe places, adding, “It’s dangerous and problematic.”
Of course, it’s not just books. Recently, a strange article on MSN created with “algorithmic technology” listed a food bank in Ottawa as a top destination and told readers to “consider going on an empty stomach.”
British field mycologist and foraging guide Leon Frey tells us protector He found that the mushroom field guide written by suspected artificial intelligence had serious flaws, among them: “smell and taste” as identification characteristics. “It seems to encourage tasting as a method of identification,” he said. “It definitely shouldn’t be like this.”
protector Suspicious samples from such books were also submitted to Originality.ai, which again said each book had an AI detection score of 100%.
