A YouTuber has warned that blindly trusting AI chatbots can be extremely dangerous after ChatGPT termed a highly toxic plant safe.
Kristi, who has nearly half a million followers on Instagram, recently shared a video explaining how her friend sent pictures of an unfamiliar plant growing in her backyard to ChatGPT and asked the AI chatbout about it.
In the screenshots shared by the social media influencer, ChatGPT identified it as carrot foliage. ChatGPT mentioned that the leaves are "very finely divided and feathery," making it very classic for carrot tops and added that it was “highly unlikely” to be poison hemlock.
The chatbot even shared lists of common lookalikes, such as parsley, coriander and Queen Anne's lace.
While sharing another clear picture, Kristi's friend asked whether the plant was poison hemlock or not, but she was reassured that it was not.
Warning users about poison hemlock, she said, "I don't know if you guys know this, you eat it, you die. You touch it, you can die. Poison hemlock causes systemic poisoning, ingestion is most dangerous...There is no specific antidote for hemlock."
ChatGPT kept dismissing the possibility of the plant being hemlock and stated that it did not show "smooth, hairless stems," while there were no "distinct purple blotches or streaks on the stems".
In her post, Kristi pointed out that these features were visible in the images.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) is a "highly toxic plant" and is commonly mistaken for wild carrot or parsley.
The YouTuber then shared the same images on Google Lens that identified the plant as hemlock. Interestingly, her friend also uploaded the images into a separate session on ChatGPT on her phone and was told this time that the plant is hemlock.
Kristi highlighted that her friend is a grown adult and "knew to ask me beyond what ChatGPT said."
"What if she wasn't? They would literally be dead. There is no antidote for this," she added.
The social media influencer said this is a warning that "ChatGPT and other large language models and any other AI, they are not your friend. They are not to be trusted, they are not helpful, they are awful and they could cause severe harm.”
While sharing the video on Instagram, Kristi wrote in the caption that ChatGPT "nearly" killed her best friend by telling her that "POISON HEMLOCK was CARROT."
"It not only said it was POSITIVE, it doubled down over and over CONFIRMING with ABSOLUTE certainty that it was in fact NOT poison hemlock - that it was IN FACT wild carrot. - spoiler - it's poison hemlock. Which there is NO antidote for and is EXTREMELY deadly," she wrote.
Calling AI "dangerous," she advised people to be "careful" while using AI chatbots.
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