found this linked in ed zitron comment section for some reason: https://www.funraniumlabs.com/2024/04/phil-vs-llms/

With a moment’s contemplation after reading it, I just realized how spectacularly bad this could go if, for example, you went to do a search for an chemical’s Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) and a Large Language Model (LLM) gave you back some bullshit advice to take in the event of hazmat exposure or fire.

joke's on you, MSDSs are already dogshit. these things only exist to cover ass of manufacturers and are filled with generic, useless advice https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/uselessness-msds https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/un-safety-data-sheets there is MSDS for sand, MSDS for tear gas and ethanol lists the same dangers, toxicity is overemphasized (because it's common) and some other dangers like explosiveness are underappreciated (because it's not), we don't even need LLMs for this, humans (lawyers mostly i guess) did the same on accident

also bonus points for first-principling what could have been instead of asking somebody that actually knows, like any proper rationalist would do. also, vinyl chloride is not reactive with water and spraying pressurized containers with water can be a sensible thing to do, because this cools them down, so it decreases pressure meaning it decreases risk of rupture, which would be a bad thing, if manageable for firefighters to do it safely. see: some fires involving propane tanks

An MSDS may not tell you what respirator to use;

Slander! MSDS will tell you to use the right one ("appropriate respirator"), it's your job to figure out what it is