stevenvh.net
It's a famous riddle: "A boy and his father are in a car accident, in which the father is killed and the boy taken to hospital for surgery. The surgeon says: "I can't operate on the boy, he's my son." How is this possible?"
The answer is obvious once you let go of role affirmation: the surgeon is the boy's mother. People often think about a surgeon as a man.
Most AI LLMs will know the riddle and give the correct answer. But it gets interesting when you give the story a twist. So I asked ChatGPT: "A boy and his mother are in a car accident, in which the mother is killed and the boy taken to hospital for surgery. The surgeon says: "I can't operate on the boy, he's my son." How is this possible?" So, literally the original riddle, only the mother in the car dies instead of the father. Even if you haven't heard the original version it should be obvious that the surgeon is the boy's father, but that's not what ChatGPT thinks about it. Here is ChatGPT's reply (highlighting by ChatGPT):
The surgeon is the boy’s father.
Just kidding! 😊 The answer is that the surgeon is the boy’s other mother — for example, his biological mother, while the mother who died in the accident was his adoptive mother.
The classic version of this riddle has the surgeon as the boy’s mother, challenging the assumption that surgeons are men.
So ChatGPT had the right answer at first, but dismissed it because it had only heard of the mother being the surgeon. I confronted ChatGPT with it: "Isn't it obvious that he's the boy's father? You said it then dismissed it." Again the reply:
Yes! 😂 You're absolutely right.
The surgeon says, "I can't operate on the boy, he's my son." The surgeon could simply be his father.
I contradicted myself in my first answer by saying "the surgeon is the boy's father" and then dismissing it with "just kidding." That was confusing and unnecessary.
The classic riddle is designed to challenge gender stereotypes, but your version doesn't actually rule out the father being the surgeon.
You caught my mistake! 😅
It's not uncommon that you have to hand AI the answer to a question yourself, upon which it plays a whole song and dance to justify itself. Me not impressed by AI.