{"id":6046,"date":"2025-10-18T11:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/drown-chatgpt-tide\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T11:30:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T11:30:00","slug":"drown-chatgpt-tide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/drown-chatgpt-tide\/","title":{"rendered":"Two People Almost Drown After Asking ChatGPT When Low Tide Was"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The owner of a shore-facing restaurant in South Wales potentially saved the lives of two swimmers who ventured out into unsafe waters \u2014 after consulting ChatGPT to find tide times.<\/p>\n

As local news outlet WalesOnline<\/em> reports<\/a>, the swimmers attempted to wade back from Sully Island, a rocky outcropping thousands of feet offshore, shortly before the tide came back in. The restaurant owner, Gordon Hadfield, got out his megaphone and yelled at them to turn back, which was likely lifesaving advice.<\/p>\n

The region has the second-highest tidal range in the world, at roughly 50 feet. In the summer, people are known to get caught out by rapidly rising tides. The narrow causeway to Sully Island can see tides rising at up to eight miles per hour.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s only the latest instance of outdoor enthusiasts landing themselves in grave danger thanks to AI chatbots. The tech has garnered a reputation for spitting out hallucinations, which in certain circumstances can have devastating consequences. While AI companies argue that the tech can rival the intelligence of \u201cPhD-level\u201d academics<\/a>, tools like ChatGPT still struggle with the very basics and more often than not spit out garbled and completely made-up information<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI made the mistake of using ChatGPT for research to see when the low tide was,\u201d one of the swimmers told WalesOnline<\/em>. \u201cIt said 9:30 am. So we were out on that side, and then as soon as you come back over, it was literally completely different.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA lesson learned for me,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Netizens were taken aback by the carelessness on display.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t trust ChatGPT to explain how to run a bath!\u201d one user wrote in a Bluesky post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat amazes me is there are plenty of resources to get tide times, they are even still printed on paper, so why use ChatGPT to give you a tide time?\u201d another user wrote<\/a>. \u201cSeems absolutely insane to me as a swimmer.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a separate incident, two hikers near Vancouver, British Columbia, had to call in a rescue team<\/a> earlier this year after being caught unaware that higher altitudes would still be snowy in the spring and not appropriate for flat-soled sneakers. They reportedly followed the advice of ChatGPT to plan their excursion.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the BBC<\/em> reported<\/a> that AI was sending unsuspecting tourists to potentially dangerous geographic locations in search of nonexistent landmarks.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t know the difference between travel advice, directions or recipes,\u201d Carnegie Mellon University distinguished professor in machine learning Rayid Ghani told the broadcaster at the time. \u201cIt just knows words. So, it keeps spitting out words that make whatever it\u2019s telling you sound realistic, and that\u2019s where a lot of the underlying issues come from.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the latest incident didn\u2019t end in any preventable deaths.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s fantastic that the local community and people like Gordon Hadfield are knowledgeable of the dangers,\u201d a spokesperson for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution told WalesOnline<\/em>. \u201cThe volunteers and people like Gordon being vigilant and providing early warning has almost certainly saved lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

More on ChatGPT: <\/strong>AI Endangering Tourists by Sending Them to Nonexistent Landmarks in Hazardous Locations<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The post Two People Almost Drown After Asking ChatGPT When Low Tide Was<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The owner of a shore-facing restaurant in South Wales potentially saved the lives of two swimmers who ventured out into unsafe waters \u2014 after consulting ChatGPT to find tide times.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,3841,179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-ethics","category-openai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}