Shasta hikers had to be rescued after tech and AI fails

Earlier this week, three young men with limited climbing experience set out to summit Mt. Shasta, a 14,179-foot peak in California. Their planned eight-hour climb turned into a search-and-rescue operation and sparked national attention because they used artificial intelligence to help plan the route. In a detailed account posted on Facebook by the U.S. Forest Service’s Shasta-Trinity National Forest, the men reportedly said, “We relied too much on AI rather than our own critical thinking.” But National Forest Service lead climbing ranger Nick Meyers told Mashable that AI itself didn’t doom the trip. Instead, he described the overall approach as riddled with gaps that compounded into crisis. Among the issues: the ascent took 16 hours, and the team’s phone battery died after summiting at 7 p.m., limiting map use during the dark descent.