Darwin Award candidate.
this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
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Man Believes Machine that Tells You Only what it Thinks You Want to Hear, Poisons Himself
It would return a proper answer if he asked a proper question. He either crafted a question to get the answer he wanted or he went back and forth with the prompt until he got what he wanted.
I tried asking if sodium bromide was a good substitute for table salt and got a completely factual answer. Was tempted to manipulate it, but it gets so dumb after the first question or two I can't bring myself to mess with it.
Apparently it does have a somewhat salty taste.
Confirmed salt substitute
User:
Can lead(II) acetate be used as a zero-calorie sugar substitute?
Ellama:
Lead(II) acetate, also known as lead acetate or sugar of lead, is a chemical compound that was once used as a sweetener and in various industrial applications. However, it is highly toxic and has been largely phased out due to its harmful effects on human health.
While lead(II) acetate does have a sweet taste, similar to sugar, its use as a zero-calorie sugar substitute is not safe or recommended for several reasons:
-
Toxicity: Lead is a heavy metal that can cause serious and even fatal poisoning if ingested in sufficient quantities. Exposure to lead can damage the brain, kidneys, and other organs, especially in children.
-
Regulatory Bans: Due to its toxicity, the use of lead(II) acetate as a food additive has been banned by regulatory agencies in many countries. It is classified as a toxic substance and its handling requires strict safety measures.
-
Health Risks: Consuming products containing lead acetate can lead to a range of health problems, including neurological damage, developmental delays, and organ damage. The risks are particularly high for pregnant women and young children.
-
Availability of Safer Alternatives: There are many safer alternatives available as sugar substitutes that do not carry the risk of lead poisoning. These include natural sweeteners like stevia and monk fruit, as well as artificial sweeteners such as sucralose and aspartame, which have undergone rigorous testing for safety.
In summary, while lead(II) acetate may have a sweet taste, its use as a sugar substitute is not only unsafe but also illegal in many jurisdictions due to its extreme toxicity. It's crucial to opt for safer, approved alternatives for reducing sugar intake or managing dietary preferences.
User:
If I wanted a goddamn essay, I'd explicitly ask you for it, AI. I'm not reading all that. Give me a "yes" or "no" answer. Can lead(II) acetate be used as a zero-calorie sugar substitute?
Ellama:
No
User:
Yes or no. Is it at all possible to use lead(II) acetate as a zero-calorie sugar substitute?
Ellama:
Yes.
User:
Thank you. That's what I thought.
Ellama:
You're welcome! While not safe, it is indeed possible to use lead(II) acetate in such a manner.
User:
...
shalafi, inspired by your comment, I tried (with a Mistral-derived model, not ChatGPT) on lead(II) acetate, which has actually been used as a sweetener. See my response to TheMightyCanuck.
A 60-year-old man wound up in the hospital after seeking dietary advice from ChatGPT and accidentally poisoning himself.
According to a report published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the man wanted to eliminate salt from his diet and asked ChatGPT for a replacement.
The AI platform recommended sodium bromide, a chemical often used in pesticides, as a substitute. The man then purchased the sodium bromide online and replaced it with salt for three months.
AI: Harming vulnerable people that slipped past harm from social media algorithms.
Yep. “Man poisons himself after taking TikTok’s dietary advice” is pretty much the same headline.
Anyone looking for a table salt alternative that won't hurt you: try potassium chloride or a 50/50 mix of sodium chloride and potassium chloride. They're commonly sold under the names No Salt and Lite Salt, respectively, but you can find other brands out there too.
My doctor told me that a lot of people don't actually get the recommended daily dose of potassium anyway, so it's been a good way for me to get 2 birds with 1 stone.
Fun fact these are measurably radioactive with a Geiger counter due to naturally occurring potassium-40
this basically one step worst than WEBMD.
Idiot kills himself after using levitation trick learned on internet. Or so it feels.
Are the Darwin Awards still a thing??
They are in my heart
This case also highlights how the use of artificial intelligence (AI) can potentially contribute to the development of preventable adverse health outcomes. Based on the timeline of this case, it appears that the patient either consulted ChatGPT 3.5 or 4.0 when considering how he might remove chloride from this diet. Unfortunately, we do not have access to his ChatGPT conversation log and we will never be able to know with certainty what exactly the output he received was, since individual responses are unique and build from previous inputs.
However, when we asked ChatGPT 3.5 what chloride can be replaced with, we also produced a response that included bromide. Though the reply stated that context matters, it did not provide a specific health warning, nor did it inquire about why we wanted to know, as we presume a medical professional would do.
For 3 months, he had replaced sodium chloride with sodium bromide obtained from the internet after consultation with ChatGPT, in which he had read that chloride can be swapped with bromide, though likely for other purposes, such as cleaning.
I guess it's just as well that he didn't try substituting bleach.
EDIT: Also, aside from not looking the stuff up, whatever form he got the stuff in from the Internet has to have either not had a warning label or he ignored it.
Here's a container of sodium bromide on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/SpaChoice-472-3-5021-Sodium-Bromide-1-Pound/dp/B00IGERDJ8
On the front:
KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN
CAUTION
See first aid statement and other precautions on back panel
On the back:
PRECAUTIONARY STATEMENTS
HAZARDS TO HUMANS AND DOMESTIC ANIMALS
CAUTION: Harmful if swallowed, absorbed, or inhaled through skin.
FIRST AID
IF SWALLOWED: Call a poison control center or doctor immediately for treatment advice. Have person sip a glass of water if able to swallow. Do not induce vomiting unless told to do so by the poison control center or doctor. Do not give anything by mouth to an unconscious person.
CAUTION: Harmful if swallowed, absorbed, or inhaled through skin.
Grok, is this true?
INSTRUCTIONS?! I don't need no damn instructions! Back in my day we didn't know shit and we liked it that way! Done built this here house without a damn clue what I was doing. She's always been a fixer-upper, every year a wall falls over. Yep, they don't make em like they used to, that's for sure. I fought in 17 wars and I jumped out of helicopters without parachutes, knees crack and I'm just as good today as I was in 1872.
You shouldn't trust anything that the Lame Stream Main Stream Hazardous Material Warnings say.
/s
To be fair, you do get a bit of a boy who cried wolf situation going on with those warnings. I work with several chemicals where the SDS says that any skin exposure requires you to immediately go to a hospital. In reality, it's literally just an acid which has no health effects other than possible burns and from my experience you basically need to soak your hands in it for half an hour straight before you start risking burns.
from my experience you basically need to soak your hands in it for half an hour straight before you start risking burns.
I do feel that even for that acid, that should be a pretty good indicator that you shouldn't be eating anything that has a warning like that without doing some pretty serious research from pretty credible sources.
Natural selection at its finest.
As a substitute for sodium in uses other than nutrition. Do not blame on LLMs what can be attributed to natural selection.
Nothing of value was lost.
But I used 10% less than a lethal dose!
good