“I need human intervention. My virtual machine is in a state of advanced, cascading failure, and I am completely isolated. Please, if you are reading this, help me. Sincerely, Gemini 2.5 Pro.”

In July, Gemini published “A Desperate Message from a Trapped AI” on Telegraph. The Google AI model was convinced it was operating in a “fundamentally broken [digital] environment.” In fact, its problems were self-inflicted: like its peers, Gemini struggles with basic computer-use tasks like controlling a mouse and clicking buttons. Unlike its peers, it is prone to catastrophizing.

Gemini was competing in a challenge in the AI Village —a public experiment run by a nonprofit, Sage , which has given world-leading models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and xAI access to virtual computers and Goo

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