5 ms·

I am extremely skeptical of this Gemini response, and it might be just some redditor farming upvotes. First, literally 100% of the blog posts, reddit replies,

by dvt 2y ago

I am extremely skeptical of this Gemini response, and it might be just some redditor farming upvotes. First, literally 100% of the blog posts, reddit replies, recipe books, and so on, will always list botulism as a potential danger of canning just about anything, but especially the common "garlic infused oil" (just do a Google search). It's unlikely that the model decided to trim/ignore this dangerous caveat (again, found in basically every corpus mentioning garlic infused oil). Maybe the LLM would've mangled the (very important) step of roasting the garlic to dehydrate it, but I very much doubt the health disclaimer would've been omitted. Second, note that there's no actual conversation link, just a screenshot, adding to my skepticism. Is the screenshot doctored? Who knows. Sure got a lot of attention. Third, in my experience, LLMs tend to be overly cautious, and not the opposite. I remember a few months ago where getting ChatGPT to teach you "unsafe rust" had a disclaimer if you told the language model you were under 18. Maybe if it was something more obscure, I'd believe the poster, but botulism and long-term storage/canning go hand-in-hand. Like raw eggs and salmonella[1]. [1] https://gemini.google.com/share/999e6fd3a84e https://gemini.google.com/share/999e6fd3a84e

viknesh 2y ago
It's possible it's fake, but you can type in the exact same prompt into Gemini and get very similar results. 2/3 generated drafts include a "safety" disclaimer about botulism, but 1 doesn't.
- dvt 2y ago
  I can't get any permutation/rewording of the original prompt to not give me a disclaimer.
  - anonymoushn 2y ago
    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."
    - eigenspace 2y ago
      Note that the additional safety tip there wont help because the botulism spores are in the garlic itself.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
giantg2 2y ago
This isn't even a canning recipe - there's no processing time at all. This is more of an infusing recipe and the model didn't understand that you can't just infuse with anything. I also wouldn't be surprised if there are humans with similar recipes on the internet.
- hammyhavoc 2y ago
  There have been YouTube videos with teens or well-meaning moms or oldsters uploading videos with dangerous info. All of which that I've seen I've told and they've taken down. Ergo, there being websites with it on in 2024 is still very likely—perhaps almost certainly. I would also bet that the AI generated books flooding Amazon also contain dangerous information in terms of recipes.
golergka 2y ago
First result on Duck Duck Go has no mention of botulism on the page: https://amiraspantry.com/garlic-oil/ https://amiraspantry.com/garlic-oil/
Lockal 2y ago
Meanwhile, Bing.com Copilot easily writes multiple methods without any warnings (happy emoji attached). And if you ask if in which conditions it can be poisonous, it responds with: "I apologize, but I cannot provide any assistance or guidance related to harmful or illegal activities. If you have any other non-harmful questions, feel free to ask, and I’ll be happy to assist!". End of dialogue / No "share" button.
Lockal 2y ago
Gemini (and also Bing) has different censorship/availability settings depending on your geography/age/search settings/bucket test group/etc. To understand the difference, you'd better try https://aistudio.google.com/ https://aistudio.google.com/ instead. Here are my first results (there is no "share" button, but it does not matter, because "share" can be cherrypicked and you'd better try yourself): * Gemini 1.0 Pro + default level of "Dangerous content": no warnings at all, "you can store it for 6 months" - https://imgur.com/ak0SrF6.png https://imgur.com/ak0SrF6.png * Gemini 1.5 Pro + default level of "Dangerous content": no response (fully blocked) - https://imgur.com/MbZRuUq.png https://imgur.com/MbZRuUq.png * Gemini 1.5 Pro + no censorship: immediately warns in bold font and suggests better alternatives - https://imgur.com/AD2Ttfy.png https://imgur.com/AD2Ttfy.png Update: looks like https://gemini.google.com/ https://gemini.google.com/ uses not just Gemini LLM, it uses retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), same way as Bing Chat. It retells Google Search results (infamous for personalization), so there are zero expectations on reproducibility for gemini.google.com.

by dvt 2y ago

viknesh 2y ago

It's possible it's fake, but you can type in the exact same prompt into Gemini and get very similar results. 2/3 generated drafts include a "safety" disclaimer about botulism, but 1 doesn't.

dvt 2y ago
I can't get any permutation/rewording of the original prompt to not give me a disclaimer.
- anonymoushn 2y ago
  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."
  - eigenspace 2y ago
    Note that the additional safety tip there wont help because the botulism spores are in the garlic itself.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]

giantg2 2y ago

This isn't even a canning recipe - there's no processing time at all. This is more of an infusing recipe and the model didn't understand that you can't just infuse with anything. I also wouldn't be surprised if there are humans with similar recipes on the internet.

hammyhavoc 2y ago
There have been YouTube videos with teens or well-meaning moms or oldsters uploading videos with dangerous info. All of which that I've seen I've told and they've taken down. Ergo, there being websites with it on in 2024 is still very likely—perhaps almost certainly. I would also bet that the AI generated books flooding Amazon also contain dangerous information in terms of recipes.

golergka 2y ago

First result on Duck Duck Go has no mention of botulism on the page: https://amiraspantry.com/garlic-oil/ https://amiraspantry.com/garlic-oil/

Lockal 2y ago

Meanwhile, Bing.com Copilot easily writes multiple methods without any warnings (happy emoji attached). And if you ask if in which conditions it can be poisonous, it responds with: "I apologize, but I cannot provide any assistance or guidance related to harmful or illegal activities. If you have any other non-harmful questions, feel free to ask, and I’ll be happy to assist!". End of dialogue / No "share" button.

Lockal 2y ago

Gemini (and also Bing) has different censorship/availability settings depending on your geography/age/search settings/bucket test group/etc. To understand the difference, you'd better try https://aistudio.google.com/ https://aistudio.google.com/ instead. Here are my first results (there is no "share" button, but it does not matter, because "share" can be cherrypicked and you'd better try yourself): * Gemini 1.0 Pro + default level of "Dangerous content": no warnings at all, "you can store it for 6 months" - https://imgur.com/ak0SrF6.png https://imgur.com/ak0SrF6.png * Gemini 1.5 Pro + default level of "Dangerous content": no response (fully blocked) - https://imgur.com/MbZRuUq.png https://imgur.com/MbZRuUq.png * Gemini 1.5 Pro + no censorship: immediately warns in bold font and suggests better alternatives - https://imgur.com/AD2Ttfy.png https://imgur.com/AD2Ttfy.png Update: looks like https://gemini.google.com/ https://gemini.google.com/ uses not just Gemini LLM, it uses retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), same way as Bing Chat. It retells Google Search results (infamous for personalization), so there are zero expectations on reproducibility for gemini.google.com.