More and more people are trusting AI a lot these days. It seems like the greatest thing since sliced bread. Whether people are using it like their own personalized Google, or are chatting to it as if it's their friend, one thing's for sure.
It's definitely grown in popularity. That means people come to trust it - for better or for worse. And for one farmer, it spelled 25 acres worth of disaster. Per Dexerto, the farmer, from China, had been using an AI app for over a year.
He'd come to trust and rely on its answers over time. After all, it feels like a miracle machine, right? But what happened next was quite the opposite of a miracle.
He'd asked AI to provide him a weed-busting solution for his latest sesame crop. And what he got was a laundry list of herbicides, one of which being "flusulfasulfaether".
Agricultural experts say the chemical is known for its efficacy in controlling broadleaf weeds in soybean fields. However, sesame plants are considered broadleaf, meaning it just eradicated the entire field.
They also clarified that the weed killer should have only been used on parts of the plants, rather than used on the whole field.
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For the farmer, this was an even bigger kick in the mouth. Like most people, he was skeptical of AI up until he began using it. He'd became complacent.
But AI also affects people in other ways, too - even if they're not directly talking to "Chat" every day. Back in April, we reported about a new (and pretty scary!) phenomenon.
Eddie Dalton might not be a name you're all too aware of - but he'd been topping the global charts. He had been appearing in the iTunes top 100 singles chart tens of times a month with his blues songs.
The problem? He wasn't real - he was AI-generated. And people are still listening. His Spotify numbers as of August have even climbed from their April equivalents - rising from 480,000 to a wild 495,000.
It is super important to be aware of the good and the bad of AI. Here's hoping stuff like this doesn't keep happening!
