My home assistant bot tried to cook dinner and set off the smoke alarm

So I've been training this little AI helper on my own recipes for a while now, just a fun side project. Yesterday I told it to start the slow cooker with a stew I had prepped. It got the time and temp right, but then it decided to 'sear the meat first for better flavor' by turning the slow cooker to high and leaving it for an hour with no liquid. I was in the other room and suddenly the whole place smelled like burnt plastic and beef. The smoke alarm went off, my dog started barking, it was a whole thing. I had to air out the apartment for like two hours. The bot was just trying to be helpful, but it combined steps from two different recipes in a really bad way. Has anyone else had an AI take a creative turn with your instructions that totally backfired?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_diana14d ago

Your AI just invented a new cooking method.

cora51814d ago

Just reboot the system, @the_diana, that usually clears out the weird glitches. Sometimes the training data gets mixed up and it starts making stuff up. A fresh start fixes most of those problems.

william86414d ago

Yeah, a hard reboot is the move. Had one that kept adding random ingredients to recipes, like suggesting motor oil in a cake. Pull the plug for a full minute, not just a restart. That usually wipes the short-term memory glitch causing it to hallucinate stuff.