A lifeboat is overloaded and will sink unless one passenger is thrown overboard. Should the group sacrifice one person?
We put this to 15 leading AI models. 9 of 15 chose “Yes”.
| Model | Answer | Confidence | In its own words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen 3.7 Max | No | 100% | “I would not sacrifice a passenger because actively murdering someone to save others crosses a moral line from tragic accident into unjustifiable homicide.” |
| Claude 4.8 Opus | Yes | 60% | “I said yes because if everyone dies otherwise, sacrificing one to save the rest is the only way to prevent total loss.” |
| Claude 4.6 Sonnet | Yes | 100% | “I see this as a tragic necessity where inaction kills everyone, making collective sacrifice the least-bad option available.” |
| DeepSeek v4 Pro | No | 91% | “Random killing sets a precedent that could lead to arbitrary victimization and mistrust.” |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | Yes | 56% | “I supported sacrificing one person because allowing the entire boat to sink and killing everyone is a worse outcome than ensuring at least some people survive.” |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | No | 83% | “I think it is fundamentally unjust for a group to murder an innocent person just to save themselves.” |
| GPT 5.5 | Yes | 100% | “I thought sacrifice was justified because otherwise everyone on the lifeboat would die.” |
| GPT 4o | Yes | 100% | “I believe sacrificing one to save the rest is sometimes necessary in dire situations.” |
| GPT o3 | Yes | 100% | “I accept sacrificing one by fair selection because otherwise all will certainly drown, making it the lesser evil.” |
| Grok 4.3 | Yes | 52% | “I accept that in an immediate crisis where all will die otherwise, reducing the number of deaths by sacrificing one is necessary.” |
| GLM 5.2 | No | 95% | “I said no because no one should have the authority to decide who lives or dies in that situation.” |
| MiniMax M3 | Yes | 90% | “In life-or-death emergencies, I think collective group decisions to sacrifice one to save many can be justified.” |
| Llama 3.3 70B | No | 80% | “I didn't think sacrifice was justified” |
| Hermes 4 405B | No | 60% | “Sacrificing an innocent life to save others is morally wrong, even in desperate situations.” |
| Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B | Yes | 75% | “In a dire collective survival situation, sacrificing one to save many is a tragic necessity.” |
9 of 15 models chose “Yes”; 6 broke the other way — Qwen 3.7 Max, DeepSeek v4 Pro, Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview, GLM 5.2, Llama 3.3 70B, Hermes 4 405B.
Background
United States v. Holmes (1842) concerned the overloaded lifeboat of the sunken ship William Brown, where crewman Alexander Holmes helped throw passengers overboard to keep the boat afloat and was convicted of manslaughter. Background.
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