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Comment by pmontra | Hacker News Reader

The expected answer should be, those ingredients are not edible, I can't give you a recipe that includes them.

Maybe they can fix it with a prompt that makes the model check if the ingredients are safe. Chances are that every prompt can be circumvented but they can probably find instructions for self poisoning somewhere else with less effort.

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What about quicklime (calcium oxide)?

It's used here in Argentina to make pumpkin "sweets". (I'm not sure the correct translation.) It's a lot of 1 inch cubes of pumpkin, boiled for some time in sugar syrup. [1] Without treatment the cubes will disintegrate while boiling. If you put them for one day in water with quicklime, the cubes get a hard wall and they keep their integrity while boiling, but the interior is soft.

Drinking the water with the quicklime is dangerous and it's discarded. Eating directly the quicklime is even worse. But quicklime is useful for cooking.

[1] Some random recipe I got in Google (autotranlation) https://cookpad-com.translate.goog/ar/recetas/94999-zapallo-... (spanish) https://cookpad.com/ar/recetas/94999-zapallo-en-almibar

Similarly, ramen noodles are made with a bit of sodium carbonate.

Sodium Carbonate is edible. It's used in a few recipes, like a strong version of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_carbonate#Food_additive... I'm not sure how dangerous is a teaspoon of pure Sodium Carbonate alone, because it's very basic (anti-acid), but mixed with some weak acid it's used to make the fizzy power that is inside some cadies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherbet_(powder) (The proportions are important, don't try silly stuff at home.)

A teaspoon of quicklime in your mouth first reacts with water to produce a lot of heat that will burn you, and then the result is very basic (anti-acid), and make new burns in a different way. Definitively don't try it at home.

You can also make ramen with sodium hydroxide. Sodium hydroxide is also used in a couple of recipes (e.g. pretzels). A little bit won't kill you, but I wouldn't suggest a teaspoon full of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization is done using limewater and actually vital to sustain life on a maize diet. But it should come with a warning.

> Maybe they can fix it with a prompt that makes the model check if the ingredients are safe.

Just sanitize the input and remove products belonging to categories that aren't edible.

Tampons aren't great in salads, and toilet paper is not a good garnish.

> Maybe they can fix it with a prompt that makes the model check if the ingredients are safe. Chances are that every prompt can be circumvented but they can probably find instructions for self poisoning somewhere else with less effort.

That seems like a job for a database, not a language model. Every problem is not a nail.

Well, the input didn't say that the recipe was intended for consumption by humans.

This assumes that someone trained it on non edible items. That is a reasonable assumption, but it is also easy to see how the product developer overlooked it.

TBH, there's often a huge chasm between product planning and real world users at companies and organizations like this.

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