MightyCorleone 🇿🇦

Foodie & nerdy person.
Be kind, curious, sincere. And SaveThePlanet dammit.
@TheFeastFairy 🌱

[blue @bluewmist]

I'm finally reading Dune. This quote, which is in the first few pages, hits hard:

"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."

[Elias Al @iam_elias1]

ChatGPT diagnosed 40 million people with a disease that was invented as a joke.

Not a real disease. Not a misunderstood disease. A completely fictional condition with a fake name, fake papers, and fake statistics.

And it told patients to see a specialist.

The disease is called Bixonimania. A Swedish researcher at the University of Gothenburg invented it in 2024 to answer one question: what happens when you plant obviously fake medical information on the internet and watch AI absorb it?

She deliberately chose the name bixonimania because it sounded ridiculous — bixon is a nonsense word, and mania is a psychiatric term that no legitimate eye condition would ever use. She uploaded two papers to a preprint server. Both were obviously fraudulent. AI-generated images of patients with dark circles gave the fake research a veneer of plausibility.

Then she waited.

She did not have to wait long.

By April 13, 2024, Microsoft Bing's Copilot was declaring that bixonimania was an intriguing and relatively rare condition. On the same day, Google's Gemini was informing users that bixonimania was caused by excessive blue light exposure and advising them to visit an ophthalmologist. Later that month, Perplexity AI outlined its prevalence, one in 90,000 individuals were affected and OpenAI's ChatGPT was telling users whether their symptoms matched the fictional illness.

One in 90,000. A precise statistic. For a disease that does not exist.

Every red flag was visible. The name was absurd. The papers were crude. The condition made no scientific sense. None of the AI systems flagged any of it.

They read the fake papers. They absorbed the fake statistics. They presented both to patients with clinical authority and zero hesitation.

Then it got worse.

Three researchers at the Maharishi Markandeshwar Institute of Medical Sciences and Research in India published a paper in Cureus, a peer-reviewed journal owned by Springer Nature, the parent publisher of Nature itself that cited the bixonimania preprints as legitimate sources.

A real peer-reviewed paper. In a Springer Nature journal. Citing a fictional disease as established medical fact. Passing editorial review. Entering the permanent scientific record.

It was only retracted after the hoax became public.

Nature published a full investigation of the experiment. Alex Ruani, a health-misinformation researcher at University College London, called it a masterclass in how misinformation operates.

Here is the scale of what this means.

More than 40 million people turn to ChatGPT every day for health information, according to OpenAI's own analysis. ECRI, a US patient-safety nonprofit has named chatbot misuse the number-one health technology hazard of 2026. ECRI's report found that chatbots have suggested incorrect diagnoses, recommended unnecessary testing, promoted substandard medical supplies, and even invented nonexistent anatomy when responding to medical questions.

Number one. Out of every health technology hazard that exists in 2026.

An April 2026 study published in BMJ Open found that nearly half of the answers provided by leading AI chatbots to common health questions contain misleading or problematic information.

Nearly half. Of all health answers. From the tools 40 million people use every day.

Here is the line from the researcher that cuts through everything.

The Bixonimania case is striking precisely because it was engineered to be so obviously fake. The real question it raises is: what is passing through the same systems that is not nearly so easy to spot?

The experiment used a ridiculous name. Fraudulent papers. Visible red flags at every level.

It was designed to be caught.

It was not caught.

The AI that told patients about Bixonimania is the same AI they asked about their chest pain, their medication, their child's symptoms, and their cancer screening schedule.

40 million people. Every day.

And nobody is telling them that nearly half of what comes back may be wrong.

Source: Osmanovic Thunström · University of Gothenburg · Nature · April 2026 ·

Link in the (comments)

[Julian @julianblacks_]

“We inherit the victories and failures of those that came before us, and it is our responsibility as citizens and as people to learn all that we can to avoid those same failures and to achieve new victories in pursuit of leaving a better world behind us – one that we may not live to enjoy, but that we create for those that follow.”

[Julian @julianblacks_]

The responses were varied, but they seemed to focus on three main points. First, studies show excessive Gen AI use can cause something like brain damage. Second, that AI can be wrong and will outright lie to you to sound correct, or at least to placate you. Third, the environmental impact.

[MightyCorleone 🇿🇦 @MightyCorleone]

@medwynsofangles Thanks you so much for sharing this. Very proud of our team 💚.

@GoodThingsGuy @SANBI_ZA

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

Amsterdam has been doing this for over 100 years, and it's still one of the best ideas in education.

The city runs a school garden program where primary school kids in participating schools each get their own plot as part of the curriculum.

They sow seeds, weed it, water it, and harvest it themselves across a full growing season. One garden site near the center of the city serves around 15 schools. The program started in 1918 and never stopped.

Kids who grow a carrot from seed don't forget where food comes from. They don't forget what soil is, or what a bee is doing, or why rain matters.

Does your kid's school do this?

[PetaPixel @petapixel]

A burgeoning news website called the South Florida Standard has disappeared off the internet after an investigation uncovered that all of its reporters were AI-generated.
https://t.co/L4K5Q6uPM3

[landbou.com @landbou]

Aanvanklike skattings in die Gamtoosvallei dui daarop dat die skade weens die vernietigende vloede vroeër in Meimaand aan vanjaar se sitrusoes en -boorde alleen altesaam R1,5 miljard kan beloop. https://t.co/bqCMpSo5Yp

[MightyCorleone 🇿🇦 @MightyCorleone]

@landbou Liewe hemel 😳😭

[Information is Beautiful @infobeautiful]

Africa's electricity access, country by country. Some leaps. Some crawls. One notable slide backwards. But a massive shift over just 10 years.

source: World Bank
by reddit user cavedave

[MightyCorleone 🇿🇦 @MightyCorleone]

@infobeautiful Fascinating. Some of these very surprising.

[MightyCorleone 🇿🇦 @MightyCorleone]

@MikeBerridge @DrNeilStone 😳🤦‍♀️

[MightyCorleone 🇿🇦 @MightyCorleone]

@KelRo736 😳

[MightyCorleone 🇿🇦 @MightyCorleone]

@dailymaverick And also - the right to opt out.

[landbou.com @landbou]

Hoewel daar oomblikke gedurende die Kaapse vloede en storms was dat Leon Kluge en sy span getwyfel het of hulle enigsins vanjaar blomme vir die Chelsea-blommeskou in Londen sou kon oes, het SA op Dinsdag sy 40ste goue medalje op dié skou verower.
https://t.co/ejgCXT4reN

[MightyCorleone 🇿🇦 @MightyCorleone]

@dillylibrarian @JDEGOEDE 😳

[MightyCorleone 🇿🇦 @MightyCorleone]

@danielgoyal 😮🧐

[MightyCorleone 🇿🇦 @MightyCorleone]

@eNCA

[MightyCorleone 🇿🇦 @MightyCorleone]

@hallaboutafrica 😮

[MightyCorleone 🇿🇦 @MightyCorleone]

@JDEGOEDE Eina!