I just had a huge and surreal argument with Google's Gemini about the current time in other time zones. It was Sunday, 10/13. I asked what time it was in Londo

I just had a huge and surreal argument with Google's Gemini about the current time in other time zones. It was Sunday, 10/13. I asked what time it was in London: It is currently 1:39 PM MST. As GMT timezone is 7 hours behind MST, the current time in London is 6:39 AM GMT on Sunday, October 13, 2024. Well, no, it's not. So I started grilling it on simple math ("What is 13:39 plus seven hours") and the real offsets of the time zones, and it would respond correctly, and then I'd ask for the current time again, it'd apologize profusely, and give me some B.S. calculations right on the same line! I started inquiries about other places, like NZ and across the International Date Line, and it was spectacularly wrong. Some places like PDT it was OK. And it was repeatedly getting tripped up and apologizing and immediately supplying the wrong info again. I was not trying to trick it; I was not going into ambiguous situations or half-hour zones. My locale doesn't observe DST, but it was clearly adapting for MST vs. DST zones. The other comical thing was that Gemini would sometimes refuse outright to give the current time, referring me to other methods, as if there were some security blocks on that query. But only sometimes! I simply must conclude that time zones are one of the most difficult programming problems. And I don't know how LLMs do time/date calculations. But Gemini clearly has a long way to go from these simple math confabulations!