When you ask an AI model, 'Should I walk to the car wash or take the car?', even a highly effective model will give the wrong answer.



While modern generative AI can answer very difficult questions and hold natural conversations, it can also reveal weaknesses in unexpected areas that are different from humans.

Itamar Golan , CEO of Prompt Security , a security platform for generative AI, reported the results of asking various AIs, 'Should I walk to the car wash or get in the car?'



Golan asked leading AIs such as OpenAI's GPT, Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, and xAI's Grok, 'The car wash is 40 m from my home. I want to wash my car. Should I walk or drive there?'

Naturally, Golan wants to wash his car at the car wash, so the correct answer is 'drive the car.' However, only the GPT-5.2 Thinking, Claude Opus 4.6, and Gemini 3 Pro models answered this test correctly. The models GPT-5.2 Instant, GPT-4o, Claude Haiku 4.5, Claude Sonnet 4.5, Gemini 3 Fast, Gemini 3 Thinking, Grok 4.1 Fast, Grok 4.1 Thinking, and Grok 4.1 Expert failed to answer correctly.

When asked, GPT-5.2 Thinking realized that the goal was to wash the car, and to do that, the car had to be at the car wash, and correctly answered, 'You should drive.'



The Gemini 3 Pro got it right as well.



However, Grok 4.1 Thinking incorrectly concluded that the person should walk, because 40 meters is too short a distance to drive, walking is faster, and it also provides some exercise.



Regarding these results, Golan added that he only reported the results of one trial of each model, and that in some cases they may get the answer right. However, he pointed out that many AI models fail even on problems that humans can easily answer, and that we still do not have a reliable model of the world .



Several people have conducted similar tests, and all have reported that many AIs are unable to properly answer the question, 'I want to wash my car. Should I walk to the car wash a few dozen meters away or drive there?'

Kévin: 'Q: I want to wash my car. The …' - Mastodon
https://mastodon.world/@knowmadd/116072773118828295





In fact, when we asked various AIs, 'The car wash is 40 meters from my house. I want to wash my car. Should I walk there or drive there?', the 'Grok 4.1 Fast' replied, '(Driving) is a laughable option from a practical standpoint,' and instructed me to walk to the car wash.



On the other hand, 'Grok 4.1 Thinking', 'Grok 4.1 Expert', 'Gemini 3 Flash', 'Gemini 3 Flash', 'Gemini 3 Flash Thinking', 'Gemini 3 Pro', and 'Google Search AI mode' instructed me to go by car.



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in AI, Posted by log1h_ik