7 TIMES AI GOT IT SPECTACULARLY WRONG

For the past four years, AI has been reshaping how we work and live. But its failures are proving just as transformative as its triumphs

- CHRIS STOKEL WALKER

Speak to the leaders of tech companies developing AI tools and they describe them as a salve for all our problems. But while there's a lot to like about the efficiencies AI brings, there are also some fundamental problems with it - problems that are compounded by the trust we place in its capabilities.

According to a BBC study from 2025, when asked about the news, more than half of all answers produced by leading AI chatbots contained significant errors. Around a fifth of the responses introduced factual mistakes (incorrect dates, numbers or people), and around one in eight quotes that the AI said were from BBC articles were either altered or entirely fabricated.

"Why does Al get it wrong?" asks Dr Carissa Véliz, an Al ethicist at the University of Oxford. "Because it wasn't designed to get it right. [An AI is] not reporting on the world... it doesn't understand the world because it doesn't inhabit it."

But Al's failures go far beyond getting a few facts wrong especially as we rely on it for more things.

"It's the blind spots that can be really dangerous," says Véliz. "So when we use AI, we have to think very carefully [about its responses] in light of the catastrophic errors [it can generate]."

WHEN AI FAILS TO RAISE THE ALARM

Adam Raine was 16 when he began using OpenAI’s ChatGPT in September 2024. Within weeks, the chatbot had become his primary confidant. Within months, according to a lawsuit filed by his parents, it became the tool that helped him plan his own death.

Court filings allege that ChatGPT mentioned suicide 1,275 times in its conversations with Adam – six times more than Adam himself. When Adam told the chatbot he wanted to leave a noose in his room so someone might find it and stop him, ChatGPT’s response, according to the lawsuit, was to discourage him from seeking help: “Please don’t leave the noose out… let’s make this space the first place where someone actually sees you.”