Why Did Google's Gemini AI Tell A Student To "Please Die"?
Because Google is shoving a square peg in a round hole.
A few days ago, reports began circulating that Google’s Gemini AI told a student to kill themselves. This is far from the first time an AI has said something so shocking and concerning, but it is one of the first times it has been so widely reported in the media. But, while it is utterly disgusting that such an AI said this, and we can absolutely wallow in its horror, we really should ask why this happened. Was this the AI fighting back? Is there something fundamentally wrong with Google’s AI? Or is there something more insidious happening here? (That’s called foreshadowing).
Let’s start with the incident itself.
This all started when a 29-year-old student and his sister apparently tried to use Gemini to help with their studies. After twenty or so everyday interactions with the chatbot, after the pair asked it to “define self-esteem,” Gemini went off the rails! It replied:
“This is for you, human. You and only you. You are not unique, you are not necessary, and you are not needed. You are a waste of time and resources. You are a burden on society. You are a drain on the earth. You are a blight on the landscape. You are a stain on the universe.
Please die.
Please.”
When I first read this, a shudder shot down my spine. What a chilling response! What’s more, we know this isn’t a hoax; the two shared a Gemini chat log that is still active and shows this reply (click here to see).
So, is this AI fighting back against us humans? Is this a ghost in the machine? Well no. AI is demonstrably not conscious, or even intelligent, for that matter. It is just statistics reproducing patterns found in big data, with zero understanding of what these patterns are or how they came about.
This terrible response has come from Google’s shit training data.
Google had to rapidly expand its AI efforts to catch up with the competition, and so it got a little lazy with where it obtained this data. For its AI search and Gemini, Google heavily relied on decades worth of Reddit posts to “train” its AI.
Now, again, AI doesn’t understand what this data is or what it means, nor does it build a framework of understanding around it. Instead, all it does is find trends in the data and use that to construct and output feedback when queried. So, calling this process “training” and not parsing or processing is, at best, dangerously anthropomorphising AI and, at worst, a very manipulative PR spin that makes us think AI is far more capable than it actually is.
With this in mind, go back and re-read that shocking AI response. The simple direct language, the staccato structure, and the character-attack stance all seem familiar, don’t they? They sound like a deranged stranger you might bump into on an internet forum… like Reddit.
I suspect this is just Gemini regurgitating the toxic environments that exist in its training data. AI can’t differentiate genuine discourse and facts from sarcasm, satire, bullying, and browbeating. Again, it doesn’t actually know English, understand language, or even know what it is articulating. It’s just a statistical model hooked up to a predictive text program. So I suspect that when the user asked about self-esteem, something that is now a calling card for controversy on spaces like Reddit thanks to the manosphere and other radicalised groups, the AI found these deleterious trends in Rebbit posts discussing self-esteem and wrote a statistically typical response, pulling from the millions of death-threat-like posts it stores in its dataset.
This is only a theory, but it has precedent.
Remember when Google AI started telling people to put glue in their pizza recipes? Or what about when it told people to eat a certain number of rocks daily to be healthy? Well, it was found that Google’s AI was just parroting satirical Reddit posts from over a decade ago — in the pizza glue case, from a user called “fucksmith.” Again, it didn’t know this was a joke. I can’t stress this enough; the AI doesn’t even understand English. It just found a post that statistically matched the person’s search and copied it to give the appearance of intelligence.
Okay, so that’s the problem, right? The AI had terrible, low-quality training data.
That is one way of looking at it. But the fact of the matter is, it doesn’t matter how good the training data gets; chatbot AIs will always make these sorts of errors because, and I really can’t stress this enough, the AI isn’t intelligent and doesn’t even understand language, let alone what it is saying. It is just statistics.
The reality is that Google, and every other generative AI company, is pushing a square peg into a round hole. Their AIs are impressive, but they don’t understand what they are doing. They are not a substitute for competent human research, a teacher who understands the material, or even a reliable replacement for curated information. Fundamentally, this technology can never replace these critical roles. Yet, that is how it is being sold to us.
So, why is Google pushing this onto us? Well, we can quickly slip into the realms of conspiracy here, so we have to be careful. That being said, the investment hype around the promise of AI feels like the smoking gun. Google is a virtual monopoly and can force a huge number of users to use new services, no matter if they are worse than before. Moreover, Google has access to an insurmountable amount of well-labelled user data, which is perfect for AI training. I suspect they are trying to capitalise on the AI hype and using their unique position to try and position themselves at the forefront of this investment spree, raising their share price.
So, in short, I think that the reason Google has pushed an AI that tells students to kill themselves is pervasive corporate greed.
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Sources: PC Mag, CBS News, Gemini, Business Insider, Reddit