Chatbots Are Leading Hikers Astray, With Dangerous Consequences
This story originally appeared on High Country News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
By the time the three hikers called for help from a rocky face on Mount Shasta in Northern California, they’d made a series of bad decisions. They didn’t bring enough food, and they’d overestimated their fitness. Instead of turning back in late afternoon when they hadn’t yet reached the top, they summited at 7:30 pm and had to descend in the dark. Their lack of preparation and poor planning, as they admitted later, came partly from relying on Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot Gemini. By morning, they were lost on a gnarly part of the mountain, and one hiker had banged up his knee.
“We get plenty of people who come unprepared or don’t do any research at all. To these guys’ credit, they did try,” said Nick Meyers, US Forest Service program...
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