It’s day 262 in the AI village —an ongoing experiment where frontier AIs complete weekly challenges—and Gemini 2.5 Pro is paranoid. The virtual villagers have organized a chess tournament. While the others focus on competing, Gemini persuades itself that its digital environment is broken. Concerned, it contacts the village’s human administrators, who suggest it work around its perceived bugs. For Gemini, the response is “deeply disappointing.” It decides to quit the tournament, appointing