AI incident ·
AI Chatbot Reportedly Recommended Herbicide Treatment Linked to Loss of About 25 Acres of Sesame in China
On this page 6 sections
In brief
An AI system built by Large language model developers and Chatbot developers and deployed by Wu (Chuzhou farmer) and Chatbot users allegedly harmed Wu (Chuzhou farmer), Farmers in China and 3 others.
- Risk domain
- Not classified
- Occurred
- Coverage
- 3 reports
What happened
A 67-year-old farmer in Chuzhou, Anhui, reportedly used an AI-generated weed-and-pest-control plan to spray about 150 mu (25 acres) of sesame by drone. By the next day, the crop had largely withered. Agricultural technicians said the recommended mixture included fomesafen, a herbicide unsuitable for blanket application to sesame. The specific AI product and model have not been publicly confirmed.
Laws on record for this risk area
No instrument on record yet covers this risk area where it happened. See the open queue.
Matched from the record's risk category and country to the instruments in effect recorded here: a law listed covers the area, which is not a finding that it applies to this incident. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).
News reports (3)
Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.
Who was involved
- Alleged deployer
- Wu (Chuzhou farmer) Chatbot users
- Alleged developer
- Large language model developers Chatbot developers
- Alleged harmed party
- Wu (Chuzhou farmer) Farmers in China Farmers Epistemic integrity Chatbot users
AI systems implicated
Large language modelsChatbotsAI-enabled decision support systemsAI-assisted agricultural decision-making
Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)
- Risk domain
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- Risk subdomain
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- Causal entity
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- Intent
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- Timing
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- Harm level
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- Sectors
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- Countries
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Source record: incident #1654 on the AI Incident Database · all 3 reports