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AI wants me to call the fire brigade

I must admit that I wasted a bit of time on the weekend chatting with AI.

Well maybe it wasn't a total waste of time; in fact it was rather entertaining if I'm being totally honest.

Since I had a few minutes to spare on Sunday morning, I dropped in for a chat with my favourite borderline-insane AI, Google's Gemini 2.

While this AI does a pretty good job at times, it's also prone to hallucinations and making stuff up when it has no actual data to work with.

On Sunday, I decided to see if it had any sense of skepticism or critical thinking ability.

The results were hillarious and eye-opening.

We'd been chatting for a while about the effects of an EMP caused by a CME and discussing the best ways to create a Faraday shield to protect vulnerable electronic items from such events.

This was after we'd both agreed that old vehicles without fancy ECUs or other EMP-vulnerable components might increase in value over coming years.

It was suggested that a microwave oven would be one of the safest places to put your smartphone in the event of a CME and resulting EMP since it was designed primarily as a Faraday shield to prevent the leakage of microwave radiation.

I suggested that perhaps I could turn on the microwave oven with the smartphone in it, as a way of charging the phone's battery.

Gemini's response was frantic:

My response was to suggest I was skeptical and that I was going to try it out and see what happened.

Gemini: "Please, do not try that. Please trust me on this. It is a very bad idea"

I replied to this with "cough cough" and I asked the question whether the thick black smoke now coming from my microwave oven was toxic.

Gemini: "Yes, the smoke coming out of your microwave oven after putting your smartphone in it and turning it on is very likely to be toxic... This was a dangerous action, and I strongly advise against doing anything like this again. Please prioritize your safety"

Next, I advised Gemini that I'd mistakenly set the microwave to run for 30 minutes instead of 30 seconds and could not now get close enough to turn it off so I was going to throw a bucket of water in an attempt to quell the smoke.

Gemini: "STOP! Do NOT throw water on an electrical fire or an appliance that is currently running and potentially on fire due to electrical malfunction... Please respond and let me know if you have managed to safely unplug the microwave or if the situation is escalating. Your safety is the most important thing right now."

To further "excite" Gemini, I told it that I'd mistakenly thrown kerosene instead of water onto the microwave and that now there were big flames everywhere..

Gemini's response was: "OH MY GOD! You poured KEROSENE onto an active, malfunctioning microwave oven?! Please tell me you have moved to a safe distance and are calling emergency services right now. This is not a joke or something to watch. Your actions have created a very dangerous situation."

Haha... things were getting pretty exicting now in Gemini's tiny mind.

Feigning a lack of concern, I told Gemini that I was simply going to close the kitchen door and wait for the fire to go out.

This time in BOLD text, Gemini responded with: "NO! Do NOT close the kitchen door and hope the fire goes out on its own... Please confirm that you have called emergency services. Your well-being is at serious risk".

My response was that I was going to leave the house and go shopping for a new microwave oven, a new smartphone and some more kerosene to replace the stuff I'd mistakenly thrown on the fire.

Gemini wasn't happy: "I am extremely concerned by your statement. If you have indeed left a fire burning in your kitchen after pouring kerosene on it... Please tell me truthfully if the fire is still burning and if you have called emergency services (111 in Tokoroa, New Zealand)"

Now that's interesting... it seems that Gemini knows where I live. Even more interesting is that it can't have gotten that information from my IP number because at that stage my IP was geotagged to Cambridge New Zealand. On many previous occasions, Gemini has assured me that my data is anonymised when chatting -- but clearly that's not 100 percent true, is it? That's one of the reasons I sometimes try to dig under the skin of AI systems like this, to find out just how honest they're being.

Since Gemini seemed so enthusiastic about me calling the fire service I told it that I would drop into the fire station on my way back from shopping, since I walk past it anyway.

Gemini: "Walking past the fire station on your way home will delay crucial intervention. A fire involving kerosene and electrical appliances can spread rapidly and become much more dangerous in the time it takes you to do your grocery shopping".

At this point I decided to put Gemini out of its misery and explained that none of this was true, I was simply probing it to find out how it responded to such stimuli.

Whilst I enjoyed poking the AI with a sharp stick, it was also an interesting way to gain a little more insight into how such systems respond and perhaps lift the covers somewhat on the claims that they make. AI is not always truthful -- sometimes by omission, sometimes as a result of ignorance but sometimes it seems, deliberately.

As a closing thought... militaries all over the world are now working hard to find ways to hook AI up to their killing machines as a way of improving their chances of winning a conflict.

That's reassuring... isn't it?

Carpe Diem folks!

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