AI pest-control advice leads farmer to destroy 25 acres of crops

A 67-year-old farmer in China followed an AI app's pesticide recommendation, which killed his entire 25-acre sesame crop. He had come to trust the app after months of it giving him advice that worked.

Why it matters: The incident is a concrete example of automation bias, where trust built from routine correct answers gets extended to a high-stakes decision the system got wrong. It's a real-world data point on the risks of AI advisory tools spreading into agriculture and other domains with physical and financial consequences for mistakes.