8 ms·

Mushroom pickers urged: Avoid Amazon foraging books, appear to be written by AI

144 points by sandebert 3y ago

add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
Regardless of the AI detection score I wouldn't trust a random book on Amazon where safety was involved. Even before LLM spam there was low quality self published garbage, algorithmic or otherwise.
- vkou 3y ago
  > low quality self published garbage, algorithmic or otherwise. To elaborate on this - a common scam that people used to run was to pay a ghostwriter ~$750 to 'write' a 'book' that had ~50-80 pages of bullshit word salad. They'd then try to stick a real author's name on it, and try to sell it. (Amazon has started putting in a little bit of effort at detecting this scam, so now the scammers have pivoted[1] to selling suckers a training course on how to do this.) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biYciU1uiUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biYciU1uiUw
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  Also low-quality traditionally published garbage.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    This is the equivalent of chiming in “75% of users eh? So that’s what… 3 out of every 4?” Yeah, we all know that the problems that AI is likely to amplify are already problems. The question is whether or not those problems will get worse. No matter how imperfect the current world is, one which is worse is 1) always possible and 2) worth preventing.
    - Turing_Machine 3y ago
      I was reacting to the implication that "traditionally published" is some sort of badge of quality. Remember "Snooki"? Traditionally-published. I could name dozens, nay, hundreds of others. In fact, "traditionally published" simply means that a big conglomerate thought it would make a buck. Quality doesn't enter into the equation. At all.
      - ethanbond 3y ago
        A big conglomerate [with access to market data on the demand side and tons of book optionality on the supply side] thinking it would make a buck absolutely is an additional filter for quality that doesn’t exist for AI-written self-published books. Real businesses and real authors also tend to be concerned about getting sued for things like libel or defamation, or just generally having their brand reputations dragged through the mud after releasing mislabeled and subpar products. It’s definitely an imperfect filter, sure, but then just see my original comment.
      - snypher 3y ago
        We could have a discussion about which celebrities you don't like but the issue here is material which is factually wrong and hence dangerous.
        Turing_Machine 3y ago
        Like, say, astrology? Should that be banned? No one put you, or anyone, in charge of deciding which information is "dangerous".
        thefurdrake 3y ago
        [flagged]
        ethanbond 3y ago
        It’s the contrarianism fetish run amok
qubex 3y ago
It’s only a matter of time before some AI ‘textbook’ on some obscure field of medicine or surgery gets somebody killed.
- barelyauser 3y ago
  It's only a matter of time before some internet "thing" on some obscure field of medicine or surgery gets somebody killed. There is no Utopy. Embrace the nature of reality. AI will become norm, and it will bring all the good and bad with it.
  - convolvatron 3y ago
    it may be true that there is no other path, but we really can't help but notice that the bulk of human knowledge is being replaced by literal noise. that is going to be a real problem.
  - coffeefirst 3y ago
    We don't have to accept that. We regulated formaldehyde out of food, mercury out of "medicine," and fire safety into workplaces. AI doesn't get to be special just because some business would rather be negligent.
    - hilbert42 3y ago
      "We don't have to accept that." True if we took action, but look at what we've already accepted that's questionable. Just take how we've accepted how the internet has deteriorated and rotted over the past 20 or so years because we as a society have done nothing to stop the rot. Individually we don't like what's happened, collectively we're now powerless to do anything about it because it's too late. The fact that Amazon has the irresponsible hide to sell books of this kind is proof enough. Amazon doesn't have to worry if someone dies, Bezos won't be charged. Things have changed.
- iancmceachern 3y ago
  I've literally seen another commenter comment here on HN that chatgpt has given them more and better medical advice then their doctor. It's already happened probably and we don't know it. It's almost guaranteed that someone has asked for and taken bad medical advice from AI sources to their detriment.
ryanwaggoner 3y ago
This feels like another place that libraries can be valuable, as curators of content.
ajuc 3y ago
Holy shit, that's cold.
_jal 3y ago
I think I'm at the point where "platform" stores are more hassle than they're worth. Saving a buck doesn't mean much when they aren't delivering the product you wanted. Amazon is a huge vending machine stocked by anonymous third parties. That's useful in a few ways, and a huge mess in too many others. I'd already dropped them because their logistics are utter crap for me, but they seem to have no interest in cultivating consumer trust, so I doubt this will change after I move.
nkrisc 3y ago
It seems to me that many books on Amazon are now AI generated trash. I received a book as gift for my son, purchased from Amazon, that was completely nonsensical. It was about caves. Here’s a quote: “Some of the most common animals found in the caves are stalactites and calcite, while others are caves.” The whole book was absurd sentences like that. Every page was a single paragraph accompanied by a random picture of a cave on the opposite page. The “publisher” has hundreds of “books” about every topic imaginable. If you search “{topic} for kids” one of their books would come up. These texts have no redeeming quality or value. Their mere existence is a net-negative for society. Amazon is selling this trash as if it were a real book. It’s predatory at best.
- Hikikomori 3y ago
  https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-ai-is-coming-for-117712422/ https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...
- klyrs 3y ago
  Please name and shame.
  - CatWChainsaw 3y ago
    Seriously. It's not libel if it's true and OP would be doing a favor.
  - mindslight 3y ago
    OP did - "Amazon". That's the company that people are trusting to be offering real products, that isn't actually doing much in the way of QA, and instead just abusing customer labor to do QA and a "no fault return".
    - loa_in_ 3y ago
      How do you do QA on one-off items or reliably fact check books?
jbandela1 3y ago
My intuition is that given the literal life or death nature of the enterprise, mushroom pickers should avoid leaning solely on any book, AI produced or not. Mushrooms in different parts of the world look different. There can be subtleties that the books leave out. Anybody can publish a book and most books disclaim liability. The best way is probably to find a local trusted, experienced mushroom picker that you trust and follow them around for a bit. There is a reason that surgeons to be are not just given a textbook on surgery and told to just read the book and they will be fine. Instead they follow around experienced surgeons for a few years learning from them.
- tapland 3y ago
  There's a reason for that and one of the reaaons is surgeries don't primarily happen a few weeks a year and require you to find happy amateurs to teach you around where you plan to do them going forward.
- hilbert42 3y ago
  "My intuition is that given the literal life or death nature of the enterprise, mushroom pickers should avoid leaning solely on any book, AI produced or not." Exactly. There is no second chance from death cap mushrooms, and in recent years they've spread to places where they weren't once found. Most know that some mushrooms can be dangerous but few know how truly deadly the amatoxin in death caps can be. People where I am in Australia have died only in the last few weeks from eating them despite warnings after previous deaths. Note the warning sign in the link below: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_phalloides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_phalloides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatoxin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatoxin
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
zzzeek 3y ago
AI would be used (unsafely) to classify mushrooms, this exact prediction at 17:09 in Angela Collier's excellent "AI does not exist but it will ruin everything anyway" video, which I recommend for anyone interested in the subject: https://youtu.be/EUrOxh_0leE?t=1029 https://youtu.be/EUrOxh_0leE?t=1029
causality0 3y ago
Why has the original title been edited to make it much less clear?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- sandebert 3y ago
  Because it was too long for HN. I had to work on it quite a bit to make it short enough. Sorry that I needed to manhandle it, I did not enjoy it either.
everforward 3y ago
If what that Twitter post is saying is true, I don't think this will last long. This sounds like it could be both civilly and criminally negligent if someone is actually harmed and the authors can't come up with a very convincing "we tried to verify but were wrong" story. If they're literally just ingesting existing mushrooms books into an AI and publishing the output without verification or review, I think it would be hard to defend against negligence claims.
ajacksified 3y ago
Hot takes aside, if you're looking for great foraging books, I'd suggest anything by David Arora, such as "All That the Rain Promises and More" and "Mushrooms Demystified". The National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms is, of course, pretty good too. Outside of identification, "Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares" and "Radical Mycology" are good reads too.
- jerrysievert 3y ago
  came here to suggest "All That the Rain Promises and More". it's a fantastic book with spore identification as well. thanks to that book, I've eaten ~10 additional fungi that I would not have eaten before, and they were all quite delicious. also, thanks to that book, I did spore tests on mushrooms that I was "pretty sure" were correct, and found out that I was wrong. do your research, and you may find some delicious new meals. don't, and you may find death.
  - hilbert42 3y ago
    "...and you may find death." Right, see my comment to jbandela1'
    - jerrysievert 3y ago
      thankfully, I tend to stick with fairly easy to identify fungus, or even ones that have false versions that are not very toxic (false chanterelle are edible, but can give you a stomach ache, but still easy to tell the difference if you've been foraging before). I tend to stay away from morels, just out of fear of a false morel. cauliflower, lion, an oyster, on the other hand, are very easy to recognize and the bolete family has some nice slimy cousins that are nice when dried and ground. I think my favorite poisonous mushroom is what becomes the lobster mushroom due to an infection - great when infected, dangerous when not. thankfully it's easy to tell the difference. I had one that surprised me, turned out to be quite delicious, but my book is put away, and I can't remember the name off the top of my head. now that it's coming to foraging season around here (pacific nw, usa), might be time to get it back out.
bassrattle 3y ago
Yes, I recently bought a vegan cookbook just to find it full of AI nonsense, encouraging me to try it with beef or chicken. If you are looking for a new book on any topic, don't start on Amazon. Ironic that Amazon, originally a bookstore, can't be trusted to sell real books.
- thfuran 3y ago
  Can they be trusted to sell real anything?
  - ahartmetz 3y ago
    Probably not, even the fakes are being faked these days. There's a famous art faker whose fake art is being faked. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Kujau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Kujau
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Ironic that Amazon, originally a bookstore, can’t be trusted to sell real books. They were never particularly trustworthy as a bookstore, but they undercut B&M stores on prices, so if you used a B&M bookstore for discovery, you could turn around and order at a substantial discount from Amazon.
leephillips 3y ago
It doesn’t matter the subject. Know what you are reading and who wrote it. Be selective. If you want to learn about an empirical subject such as this, read things written by a human who is an expert in the field. Don’t read Wikipedia, crap produced by “AI” programs, or anonymous semiliterate trash on the internet. It’s up to you to value your time and to filter what comes into your brain.
jerlam 3y ago
What does a "book" really mean in the current era of online marketplaces that accept (and promote) self-publishing? A book is now just a differently formatted PDF file. It's not that different from any web site. Calling something a book conveys no authority. In the past, getting a physical book into your local bookstore meant that someone had to spend money to physically print the book and have agreements with bookstores to physically put the book on their shelves. This threshold prevented garbage books from being made and distributed, because you had to convince someone to invest in the book and distribution. Of course, there were always self-published books available, but they wouldn't be in the same locations as other mass-market books. You could physically inspect the book and realize that it was lower quality. These AI generated books are the equivalent of a bunch of papers stapled together. The Amazon "bookstore" has become the same as any other "App store" - full of garbage, to prey on less discerning users and vulnerable to the same kinds of manipulation.
likenesstheft 3y ago
Brick & mortar bookstores about to make a huge comeback.
jiggawatts 3y ago
This is the classic tragedy of the commons. Pro tip to Bezos: it has a tragic ending.
anarticle 3y ago
Turns out libraries will be sitting on gold mines, the only cache of books guaranteed to not be tainted by AI! :D
GuB-42 3y ago
> The titles include “Wild Mushroom Cookbook: form [sic] forest to gourmet plate, a complete guide to wild mushroom cookery” Does not sound like what an AI would write. AIs don't make obvious spelling mistakes like that. It is actually difficult for them to have bad spelling. Advanced LLMs like ChatGPT have very good writing, better than most humans, it is only when you look at the big picture that you notice something is wrong. Here is an output from ChatGPT for illustration: "As we delve deeper into the forest, remember that mushroom foraging is both art and science. Identifying hidden treasures like chanterelles or morels showcases your expertise. But with this thrill comes responsibility—ethics and sustainability are key. Leave no trace, as each mushroom affects the forest's balance. We also explore culinary creativity, from sautéed porcini to wild mushroom risotto. Let's continue, respecting nature's gifts and the wilderness." To me, technically, that's good writing, and respecting wilderness is obviously the right thing to do. There is nothing "bad" about this. It is just that a book filled with pages and pages of such prose is utterly useless.
- lamontcg 3y ago
  The human probably wrote the title and the spelling mistake.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Does not sound like what an AI would write. AIs don’t make obvious spelling mistakes like that. Token-based LLMs like ChatGPT don’t. Character-based language models probably do make spelling errors. I don’t know why we expect that scammers seeking to minize costs to produce, at the lowest cost possible, things that superficially resemble human-written books without much concern that they pass even the most cursory review of the contents would be consistently using best-in-class commercial models for that purpose.
korginator 3y ago
On the rare occasions when I order books from amazon, they are usually books that I've already read or borrowed from elsewhere, that I need for further reference or research. Aside from AI-generated garbage, there are large numbers of works that are of just poor quality, with little to no editing, spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes, formatting and layout problems, and (on one occasion) very smelly paper. AI-generated rubbish is only the latest incarnation of this problem. I recall many years ago, purchasing a book on health and fitness that had many 4- and 5-star reviews. It was not cheap. It turned out to be a 50-60 page booklet that looked like someone had taken a bunch of webpages and clicked "print to PDF" on the browser - absolutely no proofreading or formatting. There were pages with the old IE missing image icon in place of what should have been photographs. There is no reliable curation, a reputation scheme, or any trustworthy process on amazon to discover new works or explore new topics that return genuine material. This also extends to other goods such as household items, utility items, foods, and so on. It's scary that amazon also sells medicines - what's the guarantee that they are not fake, adulterated or toxic? Amazon is a cesspool.
Borrible 3y ago
Life, only the 'selected works' procreate.
someonehere 3y ago
I’m looking forward to more B&N stores coming back to the Bay Area (https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/barnes-and-noble-store-coming-to-burlingame/article_07ecddac-1978-11ee-9855-8be4ac1e21ae.html https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/barnes-and-noble-s...). I used to love spending hours at Borders in Stonestown or the B&N in Colma. I had temporary solace with the Amazon brick and mortar in WC, then a B&N opened in Concord. The Emeryville B&N gives off a weird vibe for some reason. My point is physical brick and mortar stores should be everyone’s source of truth for legit non-AI garbage book buying. Because of limited shelf space one is going to assume the books being sold have sort of vetting of sales and demand behind them. Vs Amazon having unlimited shelf space and letting garbage populate the virtual aisles.
markjonsona989 3y ago
If you're willing to spending a bit more on a book to support your local bookstore, please use something like https://uk.bookshop.org https://uk.bookshop.org instead of shopping on Amazon. I originally heard about Bookshop right here on HN years ago and have been using them since. It's a network of mostly independent bookstores that don't offer print-on-demand service which means you're less likely to get scammed by AI-generated spam.
kderbyma 3y ago
My advice that urge all to follow: Skip Amazon services and products entirely and almost anything else related to it or Bezos.
thefurdrake 3y ago
I feel like at some point we should be holding Amazon responsible for deliberately creating a situation where it obfuscates culpability as much as possible for the fake quality of its products. We crossed that line a while ago in my mind, when Amazon glibly allowed the Chinese junk product market, which it sends ambassadors to instruct on how to best ~~exploit its product, users~~ utilize it services to send dangerous products in the past. "But it's impossible to police every product that's listed on the storefront!" - Yeah, it's almost like this was a bad idea from the outset and shouldn't have been allowed to get this far in the first place.
- perihelions 3y ago
  - "should be holding Amazon responsible for deliberately creating a situation where it obfuscates culpability" I'll be the unpopular downvoted guy and propose that it's actually a *dumb idea* to regulate the buying and selling of books, and to invent new forms of liability like "the bookstore didn't "vet" the books they were selling and therefore they're legally liable for the various consequences of people reading their wares". I think that's reactionary, illiberal, and destructive: and I think it will misfire. I don't want bookstores to empty their shelves of anything remotely "is this maybe theoretically dangerous in any context some rich person might sue us". I don't want a world of empty bookshelves; I don't want a censored, bowdlerized world where books are "banned by default" until they're proven "safe". I rather a vibrant, fearless marketplace of unregulated books, many of which *are* shit—but that's always how it was. This new, temporary emergency is neither. We live, and we should live, in a culture that's fearless to speak and write and publish and bookmonger, and it's really dangerous to attack that foundation of liberal society which we depend on, just to go after one bad guy that's the villain of the moment. ("And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?")
  - thefurdrake 3y ago
    In most circumstances, I would agree with "that's reactionary, illiberal, and destructive". And also, "I think it will misfire", I agree with this, too, the more I think about it. However. Amazon has deliberately manipulated this situation specifically to hide its own culpability behind the fear of such a thing backfiring. Amazon knowingly provides access to business tools to entities Amazon has a wealth of available information to indicate are not trustworthy. Amazon educates these untrustworthy individuals on how to apply for bogus/weird patent and copyright names so they can continue to shovel their dangerous products to unsuspecting consumers (Yes, an AI-generated mushroom harvesting guide is a dangerous, life-threatening product, there is no argument otherwise considering the state of AI information integrity). Amazon knowingly provides these tools to individuals who have already had products taken down previously for them being dangerous to consumers. It's even WORSE for the e-publishing side of things right now. Perhaps my initial response was reactionary, but I can't help but feel Amazon should suffer for arranging this in some way.
sizzle 3y ago
AI generated misinformation needs to be regulated in goods sold on tech platforms period. This is going to harm people

144 points by sandebert 3y ago

Regardless of the AI detection score I wouldn't trust a random book on Amazon where safety was involved. Even before LLM spam there was low quality self published garbage, algorithmic or otherwise.

vkou 3y ago
> low quality self published garbage, algorithmic or otherwise. To elaborate on this - a common scam that people used to run was to pay a ghostwriter ~$750 to 'write' a 'book' that had ~50-80 pages of bullshit word salad. They'd then try to stick a real author's name on it, and try to sell it. (Amazon has started putting in a little bit of effort at detecting this scam, so now the scammers have pivoted[1] to selling suckers a training course on how to do this.) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biYciU1uiUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biYciU1uiUw
Turing_Machine 3y ago
Also low-quality traditionally published garbage.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  This is the equivalent of chiming in “75% of users eh? So that’s what… 3 out of every 4?” Yeah, we all know that the problems that AI is likely to amplify are already problems. The question is whether or not those problems will get worse. No matter how imperfect the current world is, one which is worse is 1) always possible and 2) worth preventing.
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    I was reacting to the implication that "traditionally published" is some sort of badge of quality. Remember "Snooki"? Traditionally-published. I could name dozens, nay, hundreds of others. In fact, "traditionally published" simply means that a big conglomerate thought it would make a buck. Quality doesn't enter into the equation. At all.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      A big conglomerate [with access to market data on the demand side and tons of book optionality on the supply side] thinking it would make a buck absolutely is an additional filter for quality that doesn’t exist for AI-written self-published books. Real businesses and real authors also tend to be concerned about getting sued for things like libel or defamation, or just generally having their brand reputations dragged through the mud after releasing mislabeled and subpar products. It’s definitely an imperfect filter, sure, but then just see my original comment.
    - snypher 3y ago
      We could have a discussion about which celebrities you don't like but the issue here is material which is factually wrong and hence dangerous.
      - Turing_Machine 3y ago
        Like, say, astrology? Should that be banned? No one put you, or anyone, in charge of deciding which information is "dangerous".
        thefurdrake 3y ago
        [flagged]
        ethanbond 3y ago
        It’s the contrarianism fetish run amok

qubex 3y ago

It’s only a matter of time before some AI ‘textbook’ on some obscure field of medicine or surgery gets somebody killed.

barelyauser 3y ago
It's only a matter of time before some internet "thing" on some obscure field of medicine or surgery gets somebody killed. There is no Utopy. Embrace the nature of reality. AI will become norm, and it will bring all the good and bad with it.
- convolvatron 3y ago
  it may be true that there is no other path, but we really can't help but notice that the bulk of human knowledge is being replaced by literal noise. that is going to be a real problem.
- coffeefirst 3y ago
  We don't have to accept that. We regulated formaldehyde out of food, mercury out of "medicine," and fire safety into workplaces. AI doesn't get to be special just because some business would rather be negligent.
  - hilbert42 3y ago
    "We don't have to accept that." True if we took action, but look at what we've already accepted that's questionable. Just take how we've accepted how the internet has deteriorated and rotted over the past 20 or so years because we as a society have done nothing to stop the rot. Individually we don't like what's happened, collectively we're now powerless to do anything about it because it's too late. The fact that Amazon has the irresponsible hide to sell books of this kind is proof enough. Amazon doesn't have to worry if someone dies, Bezos won't be charged. Things have changed.
iancmceachern 3y ago
I've literally seen another commenter comment here on HN that chatgpt has given them more and better medical advice then their doctor. It's already happened probably and we don't know it. It's almost guaranteed that someone has asked for and taken bad medical advice from AI sources to their detriment.

ryanwaggoner 3y ago

This feels like another place that libraries can be valuable, as curators of content.

ajuc 3y ago

Holy shit, that's cold.

_jal 3y ago

I think I'm at the point where "platform" stores are more hassle than they're worth. Saving a buck doesn't mean much when they aren't delivering the product you wanted. Amazon is a huge vending machine stocked by anonymous third parties. That's useful in a few ways, and a huge mess in too many others. I'd already dropped them because their logistics are utter crap for me, but they seem to have no interest in cultivating consumer trust, so I doubt this will change after I move.

nkrisc 3y ago

It seems to me that many books on Amazon are now AI generated trash. I received a book as gift for my son, purchased from Amazon, that was completely nonsensical. It was about caves. Here’s a quote: “Some of the most common animals found in the caves are stalactites and calcite, while others are caves.” The whole book was absurd sentences like that. Every page was a single paragraph accompanied by a random picture of a cave on the opposite page. The “publisher” has hundreds of “books” about every topic imaginable. If you search “{topic} for kids” one of their books would come up. These texts have no redeeming quality or value. Their mere existence is a net-negative for society. Amazon is selling this trash as if it were a real book. It’s predatory at best.

Hikikomori 3y ago
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-ai-is-coming-for-117712422/ https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...
klyrs 3y ago
Please name and shame.
- CatWChainsaw 3y ago
  Seriously. It's not libel if it's true and OP would be doing a favor.
- mindslight 3y ago
  OP did - "Amazon". That's the company that people are trusting to be offering real products, that isn't actually doing much in the way of QA, and instead just abusing customer labor to do QA and a "no fault return".
  - loa_in_ 3y ago
    How do you do QA on one-off items or reliably fact check books?

jbandela1 3y ago

My intuition is that given the literal life or death nature of the enterprise, mushroom pickers should avoid leaning solely on any book, AI produced or not. Mushrooms in different parts of the world look different. There can be subtleties that the books leave out. Anybody can publish a book and most books disclaim liability. The best way is probably to find a local trusted, experienced mushroom picker that you trust and follow them around for a bit. There is a reason that surgeons to be are not just given a textbook on surgery and told to just read the book and they will be fine. Instead they follow around experienced surgeons for a few years learning from them.

tapland 3y ago
There's a reason for that and one of the reaaons is surgeries don't primarily happen a few weeks a year and require you to find happy amateurs to teach you around where you plan to do them going forward.
hilbert42 3y ago
"My intuition is that given the literal life or death nature of the enterprise, mushroom pickers should avoid leaning solely on any book, AI produced or not." Exactly. There is no second chance from death cap mushrooms, and in recent years they've spread to places where they weren't once found. Most know that some mushrooms can be dangerous but few know how truly deadly the amatoxin in death caps can be. People where I am in Australia have died only in the last few weeks from eating them despite warnings after previous deaths. Note the warning sign in the link below: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_phalloides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_phalloides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatoxin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatoxin
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

zzzeek 3y ago

AI would be used (unsafely) to classify mushrooms, this exact prediction at 17:09 in Angela Collier's excellent "AI does not exist but it will ruin everything anyway" video, which I recommend for anyone interested in the subject: https://youtu.be/EUrOxh_0leE?t=1029 https://youtu.be/EUrOxh_0leE?t=1029

causality0 3y ago

Why has the original title been edited to make it much less clear?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sandebert 3y ago
Because it was too long for HN. I had to work on it quite a bit to make it short enough. Sorry that I needed to manhandle it, I did not enjoy it either.

everforward 3y ago

If what that Twitter post is saying is true, I don't think this will last long. This sounds like it could be both civilly and criminally negligent if someone is actually harmed and the authors can't come up with a very convincing "we tried to verify but were wrong" story. If they're literally just ingesting existing mushrooms books into an AI and publishing the output without verification or review, I think it would be hard to defend against negligence claims.

ajacksified 3y ago

Hot takes aside, if you're looking for great foraging books, I'd suggest anything by David Arora, such as "All That the Rain Promises and More" and "Mushrooms Demystified". The National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms is, of course, pretty good too. Outside of identification, "Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares" and "Radical Mycology" are good reads too.

jerrysievert 3y ago
came here to suggest "All That the Rain Promises and More". it's a fantastic book with spore identification as well. thanks to that book, I've eaten ~10 additional fungi that I would not have eaten before, and they were all quite delicious. also, thanks to that book, I did spore tests on mushrooms that I was "pretty sure" were correct, and found out that I was wrong. do your research, and you may find some delicious new meals. don't, and you may find death.
- hilbert42 3y ago
  "...and you may find death." Right, see my comment to jbandela1'
  - jerrysievert 3y ago
    thankfully, I tend to stick with fairly easy to identify fungus, or even ones that have false versions that are not very toxic (false chanterelle are edible, but can give you a stomach ache, but still easy to tell the difference if you've been foraging before). I tend to stay away from morels, just out of fear of a false morel. cauliflower, lion, an oyster, on the other hand, are very easy to recognize and the bolete family has some nice slimy cousins that are nice when dried and ground. I think my favorite poisonous mushroom is what becomes the lobster mushroom due to an infection - great when infected, dangerous when not. thankfully it's easy to tell the difference. I had one that surprised me, turned out to be quite delicious, but my book is put away, and I can't remember the name off the top of my head. now that it's coming to foraging season around here (pacific nw, usa), might be time to get it back out.

bassrattle 3y ago

Yes, I recently bought a vegan cookbook just to find it full of AI nonsense, encouraging me to try it with beef or chicken. If you are looking for a new book on any topic, don't start on Amazon. Ironic that Amazon, originally a bookstore, can't be trusted to sell real books.

thfuran 3y ago
Can they be trusted to sell real anything?
- ahartmetz 3y ago
  Probably not, even the fakes are being faked these days. There's a famous art faker whose fake art is being faked. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Kujau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Kujau
dragonwriter 3y ago
> Ironic that Amazon, originally a bookstore, can’t be trusted to sell real books. They were never particularly trustworthy as a bookstore, but they undercut B&M stores on prices, so if you used a B&M bookstore for discovery, you could turn around and order at a substantial discount from Amazon.

leephillips 3y ago

It doesn’t matter the subject. Know what you are reading and who wrote it. Be selective. If you want to learn about an empirical subject such as this, read things written by a human who is an expert in the field. Don’t read Wikipedia, crap produced by “AI” programs, or anonymous semiliterate trash on the internet. It’s up to you to value your time and to filter what comes into your brain.

jerlam 3y ago

What does a "book" really mean in the current era of online marketplaces that accept (and promote) self-publishing? A book is now just a differently formatted PDF file. It's not that different from any web site. Calling something a book conveys no authority. In the past, getting a physical book into your local bookstore meant that someone had to spend money to physically print the book and have agreements with bookstores to physically put the book on their shelves. This threshold prevented garbage books from being made and distributed, because you had to convince someone to invest in the book and distribution. Of course, there were always self-published books available, but they wouldn't be in the same locations as other mass-market books. You could physically inspect the book and realize that it was lower quality. These AI generated books are the equivalent of a bunch of papers stapled together. The Amazon "bookstore" has become the same as any other "App store" - full of garbage, to prey on less discerning users and vulnerable to the same kinds of manipulation.

likenesstheft 3y ago

Brick & mortar bookstores about to make a huge comeback.

jiggawatts 3y ago

This is the classic tragedy of the commons. Pro tip to Bezos: it has a tragic ending.

anarticle 3y ago

Turns out libraries will be sitting on gold mines, the only cache of books guaranteed to not be tainted by AI! :D

GuB-42 3y ago

> The titles include “Wild Mushroom Cookbook: form [sic] forest to gourmet plate, a complete guide to wild mushroom cookery” Does not sound like what an AI would write. AIs don't make obvious spelling mistakes like that. It is actually difficult for them to have bad spelling. Advanced LLMs like ChatGPT have very good writing, better than most humans, it is only when you look at the big picture that you notice something is wrong. Here is an output from ChatGPT for illustration: "As we delve deeper into the forest, remember that mushroom foraging is both art and science. Identifying hidden treasures like chanterelles or morels showcases your expertise. But with this thrill comes responsibility—ethics and sustainability are key. Leave no trace, as each mushroom affects the forest's balance. We also explore culinary creativity, from sautéed porcini to wild mushroom risotto. Let's continue, respecting nature's gifts and the wilderness." To me, technically, that's good writing, and respecting wilderness is obviously the right thing to do. There is nothing "bad" about this. It is just that a book filled with pages and pages of such prose is utterly useless.

lamontcg 3y ago
The human probably wrote the title and the spelling mistake.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> Does not sound like what an AI would write. AIs don’t make obvious spelling mistakes like that. Token-based LLMs like ChatGPT don’t. Character-based language models probably do make spelling errors. I don’t know why we expect that scammers seeking to minize costs to produce, at the lowest cost possible, things that superficially resemble human-written books without much concern that they pass even the most cursory review of the contents would be consistently using best-in-class commercial models for that purpose.

korginator 3y ago

On the rare occasions when I order books from amazon, they are usually books that I've already read or borrowed from elsewhere, that I need for further reference or research. Aside from AI-generated garbage, there are large numbers of works that are of just poor quality, with little to no editing, spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes, formatting and layout problems, and (on one occasion) very smelly paper. AI-generated rubbish is only the latest incarnation of this problem. I recall many years ago, purchasing a book on health and fitness that had many 4- and 5-star reviews. It was not cheap. It turned out to be a 50-60 page booklet that looked like someone had taken a bunch of webpages and clicked "print to PDF" on the browser - absolutely no proofreading or formatting. There were pages with the old IE missing image icon in place of what should have been photographs. There is no reliable curation, a reputation scheme, or any trustworthy process on amazon to discover new works or explore new topics that return genuine material. This also extends to other goods such as household items, utility items, foods, and so on. It's scary that amazon also sells medicines - what's the guarantee that they are not fake, adulterated or toxic? Amazon is a cesspool.

Borrible 3y ago

Life, only the 'selected works' procreate.

someonehere 3y ago

I’m looking forward to more B&N stores coming back to the Bay Area (https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/barnes-and-noble-store-coming-to-burlingame/article_07ecddac-1978-11ee-9855-8be4ac1e21ae.html https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/barnes-and-noble-s...). I used to love spending hours at Borders in Stonestown or the B&N in Colma. I had temporary solace with the Amazon brick and mortar in WC, then a B&N opened in Concord. The Emeryville B&N gives off a weird vibe for some reason. My point is physical brick and mortar stores should be everyone’s source of truth for legit non-AI garbage book buying. Because of limited shelf space one is going to assume the books being sold have sort of vetting of sales and demand behind them. Vs Amazon having unlimited shelf space and letting garbage populate the virtual aisles.

markjonsona989 3y ago

If you're willing to spending a bit more on a book to support your local bookstore, please use something like https://uk.bookshop.org https://uk.bookshop.org instead of shopping on Amazon. I originally heard about Bookshop right here on HN years ago and have been using them since. It's a network of mostly independent bookstores that don't offer print-on-demand service which means you're less likely to get scammed by AI-generated spam.

kderbyma 3y ago

My advice that urge all to follow: Skip Amazon services and products entirely and almost anything else related to it or Bezos.

thefurdrake 3y ago

I feel like at some point we should be holding Amazon responsible for deliberately creating a situation where it obfuscates culpability as much as possible for the fake quality of its products. We crossed that line a while ago in my mind, when Amazon glibly allowed the Chinese junk product market, which it sends ambassadors to instruct on how to best ~~exploit its product, users~~ utilize it services to send dangerous products in the past. "But it's impossible to police every product that's listed on the storefront!" - Yeah, it's almost like this was a bad idea from the outset and shouldn't have been allowed to get this far in the first place.

perihelions 3y ago
- "should be holding Amazon responsible for deliberately creating a situation where it obfuscates culpability" I'll be the unpopular downvoted guy and propose that it's actually a *dumb idea* to regulate the buying and selling of books, and to invent new forms of liability like "the bookstore didn't "vet" the books they were selling and therefore they're legally liable for the various consequences of people reading their wares". I think that's reactionary, illiberal, and destructive: and I think it will misfire. I don't want bookstores to empty their shelves of anything remotely "is this maybe theoretically dangerous in any context some rich person might sue us". I don't want a world of empty bookshelves; I don't want a censored, bowdlerized world where books are "banned by default" until they're proven "safe". I rather a vibrant, fearless marketplace of unregulated books, many of which *are* shit—but that's always how it was. This new, temporary emergency is neither. We live, and we should live, in a culture that's fearless to speak and write and publish and bookmonger, and it's really dangerous to attack that foundation of liberal society which we depend on, just to go after one bad guy that's the villain of the moment. ("And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?")
- thefurdrake 3y ago
  In most circumstances, I would agree with "that's reactionary, illiberal, and destructive". And also, "I think it will misfire", I agree with this, too, the more I think about it. However. Amazon has deliberately manipulated this situation specifically to hide its own culpability behind the fear of such a thing backfiring. Amazon knowingly provides access to business tools to entities Amazon has a wealth of available information to indicate are not trustworthy. Amazon educates these untrustworthy individuals on how to apply for bogus/weird patent and copyright names so they can continue to shovel their dangerous products to unsuspecting consumers (Yes, an AI-generated mushroom harvesting guide is a dangerous, life-threatening product, there is no argument otherwise considering the state of AI information integrity). Amazon knowingly provides these tools to individuals who have already had products taken down previously for them being dangerous to consumers. It's even WORSE for the e-publishing side of things right now. Perhaps my initial response was reactionary, but I can't help but feel Amazon should suffer for arranging this in some way.

sizzle 3y ago

AI generated misinformation needs to be regulated in goods sold on tech platforms period. This is going to harm people