When AI Meets Human Desperation: A Gaza Escape Story That's Stranger Than Fiction
Sometimes the news throws you a curveball that’s so absurd you have to read the headline three times before it sinks in. This week, it was the story of a Palestinian man who escaped Gaza to Italy on a jetski—with ChatGPT’s help. Well, sort of.
The internet had a field day with this one, and honestly, I can see why. It reads like someone played Mad Libs with current events: “Palestinian man uses [AI chatbot] to calculate fuel for [watercraft] escape to [European country].” The punchline? ChatGPT got the math wrong, and they ran out of fuel 20 kilometres short of their destination.
Now, before we all start cracking jokes about AI’s mathematical prowess (and trust me, the “it’s a large language model, not a calculator” crowd was out in force), let’s step back and think about what this story actually represents. Here’s someone so desperate to escape their circumstances that they were willing to risk their life on the open Mediterranean, armed with nothing but a jetski, some fuel, and advice from a chatbot.
The whole saga started in Libya, not Gaza directly, which makes the logistics slightly less insane but no less harrowing. This bloke had already paid $5,000 in bribes to get out of Gaza, made it to Libya somehow, bought a jetski for another $5,000, and kitted it out for the journey. That’s $11,500 AUD at current exchange rates—more than many Australian families have in emergency savings—spent on what amounts to a Hail Mary pass across one of the world’s most dangerous stretches of water.
What really gets to me is how this highlights the limitations of AI that we’re all still grappling with. ChatGPT can write poetry, debug code, and probably help you plan a dinner party, but ask it to calculate fuel consumption for a jetski journey across the Mediterranean while accounting for weather conditions, wave height, and real-world inefficiencies? Apparently not so much. The comments were full of people pointing out the obvious—wind resistance, throttle technique, fuel quality—all the messy real-world variables that LLMs struggle with.
Working in DevOps, I see this disconnect between theoretical capability and practical application constantly. We’ve got all these amazing tools, but they’re only as good as the data they’re trained on and the context they’re given. When your margin for error is the difference between reaching shore and drowning in the Mediterranean, “close enough” isn’t good enough.
But here’s what really frustrates me about the whole discussion: while everyone was having a laugh about AI’s mathematical shortcomings, they were glossing over the human tragedy at the centre of this story. The fact that someone felt compelled to attempt this journey in the first place speaks to a broader failure of our international refugee system. Multiple users pointed out the cruel irony—countries that loudly proclaim solidarity with Palestinians won’t actually take them in, forcing people into these desperate measures.
The geopolitics are messy, sure. Egypt doesn’t want to be seen as enabling ethnic cleansing by accepting refugees. Other Arab nations have their own complicated relationships with Palestinian populations. But from a purely human perspective, when someone’s willing to risk death on a jetski rather than stay where they are, maybe we need to examine what we’re collectively doing wrong.
What strikes me most is the resilience on display here. This person didn’t just make a snap decision—they planned, saved money, researched routes, and even consulted AI for calculations. They showed more determination and resourcefulness than most of us deploy for our daily commutes. The fact that they made it as far as they did, even with ChatGPT’s questionable maths, is frankly remarkable.
The story ended well, thankfully—Italian authorities picked them up and they’re now seeking asylum. But it’s a reminder that behind every absurd headline about AI and jetskis, there are real people making impossible choices in impossible circumstances. Maybe instead of just laughing at ChatGPT’s fuel calculations, we should be asking why someone felt this was their best option in the first place.
Technology will keep improving—maybe next time someone in this situation will have access to better navigation tools, more accurate fuel calculations, or even just a safer route. But until we address the human conditions that make people attempt journeys like this, we’re just putting better band-aids on a much deeper wound.