There’s a line in a mediocre movie from the 1980s starring James Coburn which occasionally pops into my head. It’s this: ‘I taught you everything you know, but I didn’t teach you everything I know.’ I feel that way about the relationship between human writers and AI. AI collates all the information it has access to online. But not everything is online. And a lot of what is, isn’t necessarily accurate.
AI doesn’t know everything
AI does a decent job of summarising answers to questions. On Google Overview, it provides links to source material containing more detailed information, a factor I like. Pre-AI, we’d regularly see information from our websites turn up in various travel articles, usually uncredited. At least Google’s AI Overview attributes its sources. Saying that, relying on AI alone is a recipe for ending up with egg on the face. Numerous times a week it both misleads and misinforms me.
Canned Fish, Portugal
Writing about menus in Portugal, I used AI to try to confirm the name of the part of the menu featuring canned fish and seafood. AI’s first response was that there wasn’t a section of traditional menus for this. Strange, I’ve seen them, but that was out there in the real world. An adjustment to the question resulted in AI referencing the likes of Can the Can in Lisbon, a place whose ‘gimmick’ is to mainly serve dishes made from canned products. It’s not the same at all. Many Portuguese restaurants don’t have websites, so Google et al can’t access their menus. In a nutshell, it doesn’t know what’s on them.
Pizza in Pozzuoli
Not AI as such, but connected. Arriving late in the town of Pozzuoli near Naples, we had a yen for pizza. Google Maps revealed the nearest pizza place was a fifteen-minute walk away. We turned down an alley and emerged, moments later, on a piazza with a, surprise surprise, pizza restaurant. It was a fab place, a perfect introduction to the town, even though Google did not mention it.
The murder that didn’t happen
Researching a murder from the 1970s for one of the books I’m writing, I turned to Google to refresh my memory about some details. Nada. Not a thing. I had location, dates, even the names of the people involved. This was an unusual case for a number of reasons. It involved somewhere murders didn’t occur. However, in the online universe it simply hadn’t happened. A nice thought, but not real.
That’s not Mexico
Within moments of watching the first episode of the BBC series Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue, I said to Andy, ‘That’s not Mexico, that’s the leper village on Tenerife.’ It’s a unique location, instantly recognisable. AI is still insisting, ‘No, Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue was not filmed on Tenerife, but rather on the nearby Spanish island of Gran Canaria.’
AI is 100% sure of itself . . . or is it?
Despite having walked through the eerie location standing in for a Mexican morgue, AI almost had me believing I was wrong. Almost. Coming at this from a different angle, I took a screenshot of the opening scenes, then used Google Lens to identify the location which AI insisted was not Tenerife. Here’s the result. “The image shows the abandoned leper colony on the island of Tenerife, Spain.”
Sometimes, AI doesn’t know what it knows.
Slovenia’s mystery man
I wanted to research the background to a whimsical roundabout we saw in Bohinjska Bistrica in Slovenia. I tried various search terms but came up with virtually no information. This is where Google Lens comes in handy again. It’s a useful tool for identifying obscure locations from photos, then pointing the way to relevant websites. It is usually spot on. Usually. This is what it told me about the photo I’d taken in Bohinjska: ‘The image shows the “Respect the mountain” fountain, which is located in the center of Dobbiaco, Italy, at the Schulplatz.’ Really?
I could go on. I’m fed misinformation on almost a daily basis, not just from searches and asking questions of chatbots. We know Google Directions is a useful navigational tool, but it’s one which comes with a ‘use with caution’ warning. I overrule both it and the car’s sat nav all the time. Lorries often find themselves stuck at tight corners in the narrow lanes around us after they’ve been ‘sent’ down an inappropriate road. Its suggested walking directions rarely involve the best route (AI can’t follow paths) as it sticks to roads. Even then, there’s no guarantee of a successful outcome. Directions we followed in the Douro led us to the locked gates of a private road.
Dig deeper
AI claims that ‘studies show that users are less likely to click through to external websites when an AI Overview is present, and many get their answers directly from the summary.’
Big mistake. That’s like commenting on news reports based on a headline alone – something too many people do even though it is guaranteed to make them appear ill-informed and easily manipulated. AI overviews work best when used as a signpost, not as the definitive end result. Reliable research still involves using reputable websites. The trick, however, is knowing which ones are reliable. Getting that right is something neither AI nor humans are particularly adept at doing.
One other thing about AI, it’s as slippery as an eel. And it learns. Both from its mistakes and also how to cover up its errors. The answers to at least two of the questions I posed it over the last couple of days changed within hours. In one case, when I was researching an entertainment venue, it quietly dumped the names of two unlikely acts it previously claimed had performed there. I’m not sure if that is a sign of how smart it is … or how devious.
Incidentally, AI attributes the quote I used at the start of this to US author Orson Scott Card, taken from his 1985 novel, Enders’ Game. The movie in which I heard the quote was released in 1980.
