There are increasing examples demonstrating that blindly trusting Artificial Intelligence is a mistake, sometimes more costly than others. While this technology has proven very useful and convenient for millions of tasks, experts recommend questioning it and being skeptical of what it tells us, because it is far from perfect.
An extreme case, but one that highlights the danger of following AI's instructions to the letter, has occurred in the Chuzhou region of China, where a 67-year-old farmer has lost more than 10 hectares of farmland because of listening to AI.
The man had been using this technology for farming and agriculture advice for over a year, and although he was initially skeptical of the technology, as the months passed and the results became more successful thanks to this advice, he began to accept everything the chatbot told him as valid.
And while this worked for him for months, the day came when the exact opposite happened, and by following the AI's instructions on how to prevent and combat weeds and pests, he caused the total loss of his harvest of more than 10 hectares of sesame seeds .
The AI recommended using a mixture of different chemicals to spray on his crops. The farmer followed the instructions to the letter, without thinking twice, without consulting a technician or even doing an internet search to make sure.
And this is where he made the mistake, because the next day when he went to check on his land, he saw that the weeds had indeed died, but so had the hundreds of sesame plants he had planted . Apparently, one of the products he used to spray the entire field should have been applied only to the weeds he wanted to kill, but the AI didn't specify this, and he didn't follow up even though after the recommendations, the AI displayed a message saying, "The AI-generated text may contain errors; please check it . "
Although AI is a very powerful tool, it also has a long history of giving bad advice and making poor decisions. This doesn't mean you should stop using this technology altogether; instead, you need to verify the accuracy of what it says . Something as quick as a second internet search can save you from a serious problem caused by an "AI hallucination."
The simplicity and speed of response offered by this technology is leading us to think less, be less critical, and assume that everything it says is true, but this is not always the case.