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.