tech

February 9, 2026

I asked AI to name my wife. To the hopelessly incorrect people it cited, my deepest apologies

Authors, a newsreader, a lawyer and an esteemed colleague: they’re all great – but I’m not married to any of them. Can we really depend on this technology?

I asked AI to name my wife. To the hopelessly incorrect people it cited, my deepest apologies

TL;DR

  • The author created a game to test AI's accuracy by asking it personal questions.
  • When asked to identify his wife, AI provided a series of incorrect names, including Jeanette Winterson, Fiona Scott-Wilson, Bridget Rose, Fiona Marr, Ann Pettifor, Julia Mills, Emily Rees, Siva Thambisetty, Carrie McLaren, Cathy Newman, Clarissa Ward, Rachel Johnson, and his own daughter.
  • The AI also made incorrect claims about family relationships, stating the author was brothers with Siva Thambisetty's husband, Jonathan Rowson.
  • Further attempts to identify his wife led to more incorrect suggestions, including Kate Clements Rowson, Helen Grant, Liz Kerr, Jeanette Winterbottom, Ann Widdecombe, Cathy Caldwell, Polly Toynbee, and Debora Rowson (nee Ffrench).
  • The author expresses concern about the unreliability of AI, especially when it is used by billions of people, and its potential to spread misinformation.
  • He concludes that AI is not sentient and can only mirror human capacity for deception, warning that people who think they are clever but are actually idiots, combined with AI, could be dangerous.

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