Earlier this summer, rangers with Shasta-Trinity National Forest found a woman camping in an off-limits area on the south side of Shasta clearly marked with “no camping” signage, Meyers said. She told rangers she had asked ChatGPT where she could camp in the forest.
“AI told me I can camp here,” she said, according to Meyers.
Then in August, while hiking in Shasta’s popular Bunny Flat area, a man stopped rangers to ask for directions. He showed them a print-out map he’d been following and explained that he’d prompted ChatGPT to produce it for him.
“It was terrible — terrible — not even close to accurate,” Meyers said. “It had route lines and place names that were totally off — just ridiculous. We were like, dude, you gotta throw that away.”
From the latest mishap:
During the hike down, the young climbers revealed to rangers that they’d relied on ChatGPT to guide their planning. Authorities noted that as a “key factor” of their mishap.
The climbers “reported that AI recommended simple carbohydrates for their climb, rather than fats because they ‘take too long to digest,’” according to the official report. “In their words, ‘We relied too much on AI rather than our own critical thinking.’”
Edit - from the non-Archive version of the article:
Correction: A previous version of the story misstated the AI tool the climbers used to plan their trip. It was Google Gemini.
Two things should happen every time something like this happens. First off, the people who did it should have to pay in full whatever costs their actions carried. Next, the company who owns and runs the AI that produced the result should be required to pay 10x whatever the costs.
At some point it stops becoming a cost of doing business and starts becoming a real problem for the AI companies. Until that point they literally will not give one single fuck. Punish the dumbasses who use AI and punish the companies proportionally too. Make it hurt both sides of the equation and it’ll definitely stop happening
I’m all for penalizing the business but we do not want to be charging people calling for help unless they were actively malicious. It’s already a problem that people fail to call an ambulance because they’re worried about the cost. If someone has an accident while hiking we don’t want them doing the calculus of, was I too much of a dumbass in planning this? Human error is very often a factor in rescue situations and we don’t want people whose lives are at risk worrying that calling for help might demolish their family finances.
How about a permanent ban on use of AI.
You fuck up this bad, you get AI Paroled for the remainder of your mortal existence and Google isn’t allowed to show you AI results if you’re logged in.
Don’t tempt me with a good time
I think legally forcing companies to make it possible is a great way to wedge things open and make it an available option for everyone.
“If you could do it for that guy, why can’t you do it for me?”
“Why do you make this so difficult to disable?”
“Make it a user setting.”
“Disable it by default.”
“Get rid of it entirely.”
not harsh enough, needs to be some kind of forced amish situation where you’re not allowed to use anything more advanced than a graphing calculator. give 'em the mitnick
Oh definitely