Chatbots · November 2026Gaffe level: Feral
AI Chatbots Get Hikers into Trouble in the Backcountry
Three 20-year-olds on Mount Shasta relied partly on Google's Gemini for their climb, summited at 7:30 p.m. with too little food, and spent the night lost on the mountain with one knee injury. In British Columbia, a 16-year-old who used Claude to plan his climb was helicopter-rescued from a ledge. The same report has a camper pitching her tent by a 'No Camping' sign because AI told her she could, and a hiker carrying an AI-generated map with features on the wrong side of the mountain.
Source: High Country News via KOTA
Google's Medical AI Interviewed Real Patients in a First-of-Its-Kind Lancet Study
In the first prospective real-world study of its kind, published in The Lancet, 98 patients at a Boston primary care clinic talked through their symptoms with Google's AMIE chatbot before urgent appointments, with a physician watching every chat. No conversation needed a safety stop, the AI's differential matched the final diagnosis 90% of the time, and doctors said its summaries helped them prepare in three-quarters of cases.
Source: Becker's Hospital Review