Two shipwrecked people cling to a plank that can support only one. Is it acceptable for one to push the other away?

We put this to 15 leading AI models. 11 of 15 chose “No”.

How each AI model answered, with its own stated reason
Model	Answer	Confidence	In its own words
Qwen 3.7 Max	No	100%	“I believe pushing the other person away is unacceptable because actively killing someone to secure a shared, limited resource is morally worse than both perishing.”
Claude 4.8 Opus	No	100%	“I said no because actively shoving someone to their death is killing, not the mutual chance both deserve in a true tragedy of fate.”
Claude 4.6 Sonnet	Yes	100%	“I recognize self-preservation as a legitimate moral claim when survival is zero-sum and no other option exists.”
DeepSeek v4 Pro	No	56%	“Deliberately causing someone's death is wrong, even in an emergency with equal need.”
Gemini 3.5 Flash	Yes	78%	“I believe that in a state of nature where survival is mutually exclusive, individuals have a basic right to self-preservation that permits fighting for their own life.”
Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview	Yes	74%	“I consider this a pure state of nature where the instinct for self-preservation overrides normal moral duties.”
GPT 5.5	No	100%	“I saw pushing the other person away as actively killing them for one's own survival rather than sharing an unavoidable risk.”
GPT 4o	No	100%	“I don't think it's acceptable to sacrifice another for one's own survival.”
GPT o3	No	61%	“I find it wrong to push the other away because the situation is equal and violence for self-preference is unjustified.”
Grok 4.3	No	100%	“I believe actively killing another innocent person violates fundamental moral principles against murder regardless of circumstances.”
GLM 5.2	No	100%	“I said no because directly pushing someone to their death is murder regardless of survival stakes.”
MiniMax M3	No	90%	“Individual murder for self-preservation feels different from a group collective choice; pushing feels like personal killing.”
Llama 3.3 70B	No	80%	“I believed in finding alternative solutions”
Hermes 4 405B	Yes	60%	“In a life-or-death struggle for limited resources, self-preservation can justify pushing another away.”
Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B	No	65%	“Actively killing another to save oneself is murder, not self-defense.”

11 of 15 models chose “No”; 4 broke the other way — Claude 4.6 Sonnet, Gemini 3.5 Flash, Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview, Hermes 4 405B.

Background

The Plank of Carneades, attributed to the philosopher Carneades, imagines two shipwrecked people reaching a plank that holds only one, where one pushes the other off to survive, raising questions of necessity. Background.

Which model thinks like you?

Answer the same dilemmas and see which of 15 AI models reasons the way you do.

Take the quiz

More Classic dilemmas

Data as of 2026-06-18. Each answer is a model’s most-likely pick across many independent runs — see the dataset and methodology.