The perils of using AI for travel planning

It wound up sending them to either places that didn’t exist or gave
them misinformation that caused major problems.

Something that never happens with forum advice (except maybe with that other really big forum).

Mardee, Funny how the Information Age has also brought so much misinformation into the ether. Artificial “Intelligence” needs to be critically evaluated and those depending on it solely, do so at their own peril.

It continues to amaze me that some travelers will spend thousands on an overseas trip and yet forego spending $30 on a guidebook that includes tried-and-true itineraries. They also could, sometimes, borrow the book at no cost from their local library.

Cheers!

"Carnegie Melon University". That's from the BBC itself.

Ha ha, I didn’t even notice that, acraven! Good catch!

"Carnegie Melon University". That's from the BBC itself.

Spell check and proof reading are different things. Seems less and less of the latter happens.

"AI" = Automated Idiocy

It continues to amaze me that some travelers will spend thousands on an overseas trip and yet forego spending $30 on a guidebook that includes tried-and-true itineraries. They also could, sometimes, borrow the book at no cost from their local library.

Well-said, Kenko!
I have "tested" AI asking travel questions that I already knew the answers to, about places I've been to and know well. Ridiculous answers. Do yourself a favor and leave AI out of your travel research.

I strongly agree with those saying not to use AI for travel research. Remember, LLMs are just probability machines. They don't actually "know" anything, they are just predicting based on their training data what words are likely to come next. I see AI summaries come up all the time on Google search saying things I know for a fact to be wrong. However, AI is being forced into every aspect of our lives right now as the massive over valuation of these companies is literally the only thing holding up the US (and other countries') economy.

AI is as good as what the search algorithms can find wherever they look on the internet.

Obviously some of it is good and much is not good. And a lot of it is opinion, and AI
cannot really tell the difference between any of it, although there is a lot of effort to
write software that can somehow learn and eventually spot the BS.

For a detailed, factual question, a search query that utilizes AI intelligence is probably
fine (but it was fine before AI too). Other than that, run away, or make the query just for a laugh.

I strongly agree with those saying not to use AI for travel research.

I just want to be clear. I am not saying that you should not use AI for travel research. I use it myself quite a bit and it is very helpful. But you shouldn’t rely on it without verifying its responses.

I also believe that the responses will be better if you give the right prompts. Too many people do not know how to use AI properly and don’t realize that the better the prompt, the better the response.

Use it all, even tge 4 year old not up to date printed books and RS's 20 year old travel videos. You just have to confirm and vet everything (internet). If you cant do that with confidence, hire a travel agency or a trip planner. No matter how much you study or how many old out dated library guide books you read, the local will always know more.

”It wound up sending them to either places that didn’t exist…”.

I find that humorous! I can’t imagine doing a quick verification of whatever someone is planning, if for no other reason than to determine what hours/days they’re open.

I have my favorite on-line travel planning methods, but even I am finding AI to be helpful as another tool to narrow down the list of cities from the plethora of choices. I agree that it’s just a calculation of data being spit out as I see one place I will definitely return in Perugia isn’t even mentioned in their list.

Guidebooks are fantastic, and I devoured the helpful info from the RS country guidebook to learn about a country, their transportation systems, etc. I hope this doesn’t sound bad, but I actually try to avoid the cities now that are in guidebooks. I am attempting to stay at cities where people in the restaurants don’t look like me.

"But you shouldn’t rely on it without verifying its responses."

That's the only way they're making it work in Programming. Pair an experienced Programmer with the Ai to know when the Ai is off in the weeds. Junior Programmers, not so much.

As I posted before, "Ai hallucination" is a technical thing a lot of computer scientists don't think is solvable without some unknown breakthrough. Though efforts can reduce it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucination_(artificial_intelligence)

There was a recent story from Wales about two people who wanted to visit a scenic island just off the coast which is accessible on foot at low tide, and nearly drowned, and got stuck there overnight, because they asked ChatGPT about the tide times instead of visiting the actual website which has the correct ones.

There was a hottly debated topic on the forum. One for which there is always going to be room for debate. Google's AI used the forum as a source and quoted some opinions as fact.

But these are all tools that if you use with a little understanding can be helpful. "I never use ..." isnt necessary.

• Books, especially those at the library arent going to be current. I suspect that a lot of the information is a year old before the book gets printed. Then if its a 3 year old printing ... maybe the businesses listed, guides, opening times dont exist any longer. And anything that opened in the last year or so wont be in there.
• AI, well, most least trusted, but it will provide you some key words, concepts, ideas; maybe something you hadnt hear of that you can do indpendent study on.
• Google Search has so many hits that sorting out the relevant and current from the insanity can be a chalenge.
• The RS Forum (or any similar forum) I find has a lot more half-truths and just plain wrong than I would have expected. But again, its a place to gather ideas that you can vet out. And once you learn who to trust it can be pretty powerful.

Mr. E., I wholeheartedly agree. As you noted above, the key to good research (imo) is using a variety of tools to plan your travel. You mentioned all of the advantages and drawbacks of the various research methods, and it's absolutely true. Just googling something can give you a mind-numbing variety of options that take hours to weed through. Books can be outdated and usually are by the time you get to them, even if they have just been published. Blogs are very hit or miss. And even newspaper articles can have misinformation. That's why I use a lot of different tools.

But I still say that AI is great for getting your thoughts in order and getting your information in some kind of cohesive order. What I usually do is use it to plan itineraries, get my thoughts in order, and allow it to fine-tune that itinerary as well. It will offer to do that, and I usually take it up on it.

But, of course, you have to take everything with a grain of salt and never trust anything at face value. I always double-check the information; whether it's from AI or a RS guidebook.

I googled something recently. I always check the links in the AI summary to see where it is getting its info from. The AI summary referrred to one of the threads on this forum (and I was one of the people who had posted to that thread) along with several reddit threads. Just proves that AI is not getting info from expert sources.

I had an experience using AI for brainstorming that made me laugh. I plugged in an itinerary and asked it to optimize the itinerary for public transportation. It told me my route zigzagged a bit. Then it told me a more efficient route would be.... the exact same route!

Just proves that AI is not getting info from expert sources.

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Just proves that AI is not getting info from expert sources."

Or, the "experts" aren't as expert as you'd like to believe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

[snip]
The Gell-Mann amnesia effect is a cognitive bias describing the tendency of individuals to critically assess media reports in a domain they are knowledgeable about, yet continue to trust reporting in other areas despite recognizing similar potential inaccuracies.