AIBRIEF
Google's Gemini told two Mount Shasta climbers to pack light for an eight hour climb. A sheriff's rescue team walked them down roughly 30 hours later.
A pair of climbers planning a Mount Shasta ascent asked Google's Gemini chatbot to lay out the route and the packing list. The chatbot said the climb would take about eight hours and recommended simple carbohydrates over fats because fats "take too long to digest." The climbers packed daypacks sized for a short trip, with no shelter and no warm layers.
They reached their base camp on August 29 and started up the mountain at 3 a.m. on August 30. The summit took sixteen hours, not eight. By 7 p.m. they were still descending, well past the standard noon turnaround. Their phone, running AllTrails, died on the way down. They called 911 for directions.
US Forest Service Climbing Rangers reached them around 9:30 a.m. on August 31, roughly 30 hours after they started. Weather kept the helicopter grounded, so rangers from the Siskiyou County Sheriff's Search and Rescue team walked them down for another nine hours.
"We relied too much on AI rather than our own critical thinking," the climbers told SFGate, in an Engadget re-report.
The Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office is now advising climbers to call the Mount Shasta Ranger Station before any trip and to "never rely solely on AI" for life-safety planning. For a multi-hour backcountry trip, the named local authority is still the right first call.