Three novice climbers stranded on Mount Shasta over the weekend told rescuers they had relied on Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence to help plan the trip, according to the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office.

The three young men from Roseville ultimately spent an unplanned night high on the mountain after a 16-hour climb, a dead phone battery and a knee injury complicated their descent. The U.S. Forest Service said climbing rangers reached them the following morning in remote terrain inside Mud Creek Canyon.

“We relied too much on AI rather than our own critical thinking,” the climbers later told rangers. SFGATE reached out to the U.S. Forest Service but did not hear back prior to publication.

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The climbers told officials they had used Google’s Gemini AI, YouTube and AllTrails to prepare for the trip, relying on Gemini specifically for route research, as well as food and water recommendations. The group said the platform advised them to pack simple carbohydrates instead of fats because fats “take too long to........

© SFGate