Teen stranded on Vancouver cliff after AI-planned hike

A 16-year-old hiking alone up Crown Mountain north of Vancouver spent several hours stranded at the base of a cliff on Saturday after following a route he had planned with an AI chatbot, Gizmodo reports. The route was supposed to take him up through a gully. It put him onto a climbing line called the Widowmaker.

The teen set out from Grouse Mountain around 8 a.m. North Shore Rescue got the call just before 3:30 p.m. and lowered two rescue technicians from a helicopter to hoist him off the mountain, wrapping up before 6:30 p.m. In a Facebook post, the team wrote that "this hiker had somehow got far off the Crown hiking route and became stranded on a climbing route known as the 'Widowmaker'."

"The boy was very scared. He definitely feared for his life," search manager Paul Markey said. His advice afterward was flat: "Be cautious when getting routes and information suggested through AI. You can't just blindly follow what AI is proposing to you."

Which chatbot drew the line is not disclosed. Gizmodo notes a separate incident this year in which three hikers on California's Mount Shasta relied on Google Gemini and set out with too little food and water. The story has moved through the circles we watch too, with two experts in our directory sharing the piece.