The chemical is capsaicin, and it’s a neurotoxin. That’s why with repeated exposure you can start to gain resistance.

Birds are less sensitive to capsaicin, which made having it around seeds beneficial for plants. Birds eat the seeds and then spread them after flying somewhere else, but mammals are deterred from eating the seeds and they are poor vectors for spread because most mammals that eat large amounts of vegetable matter have molar teeth that aid in breaking down small seeds for digestion.

Until a certain mammal decided they liked the burn, and deliberately spread those plants further than birds ever did.

Well, one way or another it won’t be too many generations. Either we figure out it’s a bad idea or sooner or later things will go off the wheels enough that we won’t maintain the infrastructure to support everyone using this type of “AI”. Being kind of right 90% of the time is not good enough at a power plant.