Are you using AI / ChatGPT for travel planning and while travelling?

[Pushka]

Yes Gemini is definitely off camber. I asked for a list of recent suspense best selling book titles and it came back with 2 authors I knew but fictitious titles. When I called it out the actual answer back was that it had panicked when I had given my specifications and so had made up some titles. I mean that’s just weird.

Sometimes if important I start the search with Facts Only. Or, My future depends on accuracy. etc. that sometimes helps.

 

[kookaburra75]

Sometimes if important I start the search with Facts Only. Or, My future depends on accuracy. etc. that sometimes helps.

That's an important thing to do. Set some guardrails/boundaries at the start. All generative AI tools (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude etc) have a shortcoming which is technically referred to as "sycophancy", where they try and make you happy. That might involve making stuff up to provide you with a long list of answers, what might seem authoritative answers and so on. You might see phrases in responses like "... what a great suggestion", "... what do you think?" etc. It's like having a bad puppy - that sits there wagging its tail.

 

[Flyfrequently]

I do for finding out the tourist spots in the in the city I am travelling to, but it doesn't do a great job in planning the whole itinerary and it's better to plan the itinerary by myself rather than spending huge amount of time in first telling ChatGPT what I want and then keep editing those plans.

I wouldn't say it is smart enough yet to be fully relied upon for planning the whole itinerary.

Welcome to AFF @Travel_Hacks

 

[HMcM]

I do for finding out the tourist spots in the in the city I am travelling to, but it doesn't do a great job in planning the whole itinerary and it's better to plan the itinerary by myself rather than spending huge amount of time in first telling ChatGPT what I want and then keep editing those plans.

I wouldn't say it is smart enough yet to be fully relied upon for planning the whole itinerary.

I've used it effectively for similar uses. I've used it for "what are the best tourist spots to see in x city?" but I have also found it effective when trying to pick cities to travel to. Earlier in the year I had a work trip to the US that I turned into a holiday. I had a certain number of days and was originally going to meet up with a friend. Plans fell through so I had to reorganise the trip pretty quickly. I told ChatGPT to give me a few options after telling it how I like to travel and the region I wanted to stay in. From there was able to more manually ask questions or go into details.

It was pretty effective at calling out points of interest that I wouldn't have thought of myself.

I definitely wouldn't trust it with organising a complete itinerary without me going through it with a fine tooth comb, but I also wouldn't trust a travel agent without going over it all myself either.

 

[Seat0B]

That's an important thing to do. Set some guardrails/boundaries at the start. All generative AI tools (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude etc) have a shortcoming which is technically referred to as "sycophancy", where they try and make you happy. That might involve making stuff up to provide you with a long list of answers, what might seem authoritative answers and so on. You might see phrases in responses like "... what a great suggestion", "... what do you think?" etc. It's like having a bad puppy - that sits there wagging its tail.

Yes and when you call it out, it just says "oh sorry, you are right." I had this exchange recently after it got me all excited about visiting Stevnsfort in Denmark in December!



And it hallucinated our arrival date, despite being told the correct dates.



But it also made some excellent suggestions of places to match our interests, best hotels to stay to optimise loyatly benefits whilst minimising the walking distance from the station, and sorted an optimised day plan for the places we want to visist.

So really, I treat it like a new graduate - I give it a job, leave it to run, then check everything and give it a bit of feedback when needed . Overall, it definitely adds value, but just cannot be fully relied upon.

 

[Coathanger]

So really, I treat it like a new graduate - I give it a job, leave it to run, then check everything and give it a bit of feedback when needed .

This 100%.