HAHAHAHA

BBC: The perils of letting AI plan your next trip

"...An imagined town in Peru, an Eiffel tower in Beijing: travellers are increasingly using tools like ChatGPT for itinerary ideas – and being sent to destinations that don't exist.

Miguel Angel Gongora Meza, founder and director of Evolution Treks Peru, was in a rural Peruvian town preparing for a trek through the Andes when he overheard a curious conversation. Two unaccompanied tourists were chatting amicably about their plans to hike alone in the mountains to the "Sacred Canyon of Humantay".

"They [showed] me the screenshot, confidently written and full of vivid adjectives, [but] it was not true. There is no Sacred Canyon of Humantay!" said Gongora Meza. "The name is a combination of two places that have no relation to the description. The tourist paid nearly $160 (£118) in order to get to a rural road in the environs of Mollepata without a guide or [a destination]."...

cc @researchbuzz for your collection

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20250926-the-perils-of-letting-ai-plan-your-next-trip

#lllm #chatgpt #hallucination #travel

The perils of letting AI plan your next trip

An imagined town in Peru, an Eiffel tower in Beijing: travellers are increasingly using tools like ChatGPT for itinerary ideas – and being sent to destinations that don't exist.

BBC

Good description in the article:

""It doesn't know the difference between travel advice, directions or recipes," Ghani said. "It just knows words. So, it keeps spitting out words that make whatever it's telling you sound realistic, and that's where lot of the underlying issues come from.""

#wordsalad #llm #travel

@ai6yr I just hope nobody thought that highway across the cressts of the Baffin Island mountains, with its many rest stops, was real. 🥶
@ai6yr There is also a lot of worry about people using "AI" hiking trail apps and getting lost as they have fake maps.
@ai6yr @researchbuzz as if google maps weren't bad enough directing people onto private dirt roads & fire lanes. Now we're gonna wind up trying to find the secret restaurant inside a laundromat.
@Finitum @ai6yr @researchbuzz I live right on the edge where things become rural. There are about a dozen named roads shown on Goigle Maps that are fire roads or powerline maintenace tracks owned by PG&E.
@ai6yr @pussreboots @Finitum @researchbuzz
You’d think, in a rational world, that there’d be consequences for stuff like that. But we are no longer in one of those.

@ai6yr @researchbuzz

People don't seem to understand public models are crippleware.

Its like that Rick and Morty episode when Jerry gets minimum compute in the simulation.

Honestly they don't need to understand. They'll destroy AI thinking it's useless and wasteful, and if it's not useless to the in-crowd, all the more reason to destroy it! Things always get worse, when only elites get to have useful things, while everyone else gets shit.

CC: @[email protected] @[email protected]
@ai6yr @researchbuzz We are gonna successfully revive the medieval tradition of clueless europeans going to Asia or Africa looking for Prester Johns Kingdom at this rate.
@Owlor @ai6yr @researchbuzz chatgpt find me the Northwest Passage
@Owlor @ai6yr @researchbuzz laying traps for troubadours who get killed before they reach Bombay as a service

@ai6yr

The schadenfreude is delicious.

@ai6yr @researchbuzz I would like to see the Eiffel Tower in Bejing! I bet the Sydney Opera House is just down the street and you could take the subway to the Grand Canyon!
@ai6yr @researchbuzz I'm all for bringing back paper maps.
Tianducheng: The Paris Dupe in China With Its Own Eiffel Tower - Travel Noire

Tianducheng is an underrated tourism town in China that replicates the architecture of Paris. Learn more about tourist attractions there.

Travel Noire
@ai6yr @researchbuzz @n1k0 serendipity to the next level :)