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AI It's funny.  Laugh. Canada

Microsoft AI Suggests Food Bank As a 'Cannot Miss' Tourist Spot In Canada 50

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Late last week, MSN.com's Microsoft Travel section posted an AI-generated article about the "cannot miss" attractions of Ottawa that includes the Ottawa Food Bank, a real charitable organization that feeds struggling families. In its recommendation text, Microsoft's AI model wrote, "Consider going into it on an empty stomach." Titled, "Headed to Ottawa? Here's what you shouldn't miss!," (archive here) the article extols the virtues of the Canadian city and recommends attending the Winterlude festival (which only takes place in February), visiting an Ottawa Senators game, and skating in "The World's Largest Naturallyfrozen Ice Rink" (sic).

As the No. 3 destination on the list, Microsoft Travel suggests visiting the Ottawa Food Bank, likely drawn from a summary found online but capped with an unfortunate turn of phrase: "The organization has been collecting, purchasing, producing, and delivering food to needy people and families in the Ottawa area since 1984. We observe how hunger impacts men, women, and children on a daily basis, and how it may be a barrier to achievement. People who come to us have jobs and families to support, as well as expenses to pay. Life is already difficult enough. Consider going into it on an empty stomach."

That last line is an example of the kind of empty platitude (or embarrassing mistaken summary) one can easily find in AI-generated writing, inserted thoughtlessly because the AI model behind the article cannot understand the context of what it is doing. The article is credited to "Microsoft Travel," and it is likely the product of a large language model (LLM), a type of AI model trained on a vast scrape of text found on the Internet.
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Microsoft AI Suggests Food Bank As a 'Cannot Miss' Tourist Spot In Canada

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  • by Cabriel ( 803429 ) on Friday August 18, 2023 @08:08AM (#63777520)

    Looks like our new AI/LLM overlords may have figured out the third list item is the perfect place to insert irony.

    I laughed because letâ(TM)s be honest: This could be a great way to raise awareness and funds for the disadvantaged.

    • by evanh ( 627108 )

      More likely a bunch of free campers will turn up wanting handouts.

    • It also is some good humourist writing, even if it didn't realize it.

    • by dbialac ( 320955 )
      If you look at it from the perspective of how the AI would see this situation, it sees it as a bunch of people gathered around a single spot for a shorter period of time, like a tourist spot.
      • I guarantee you it did not do this. It's a language model, not a

        But let's say they did actually do this. Imagine allowing your AI to use location data which it then uses to tell everyone you're using a food bank? LAWSUIT!

        • by dbialac ( 320955 )
          Taking a step back (myself included), it doesn't need GPS location to determine that, just text or available messaging content. One possibility might be, "You gotta, check out Ottawa Food Bank. They're awesome!" or sharing location information of the food bank, not the person, with an app like Maps, where there may not be any privacy violations.
  • by dsgrntlxmply ( 610492 ) on Friday August 18, 2023 @08:42AM (#63777598)
    Wanted: stochastic parrot cage cleaner.
  • Don't judge (Score:4, Funny)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Friday August 18, 2023 @08:52AM (#63777622)

    Homeless people deserve to travel too. Plus have you seen the cost of Air-BnB these days? Travellers may find themselves unable to buy food after paying the cleaning fee, service fee, reservation fee, towel fee, cameras temporarily disabled in the shower fee, washing fee, drying fee, what the fuck do you mean I need to give you a key fee, and an accounting fee because keeping track of all these fees requires effort.

    The AI is just more aware of the plight of the average tourist, that is all.

    • My friend just recommended I Air-BnB one of the free boats I got this year for like $5 a night. It's 13' long and open to the weather. Apparently people will pay $5 to sleep in a dinghy. Since there's no lower limit on airbnb pricing, people can renting out parking spaces where you can park your car and sleep in it for $5. No cleaning fee.
  • Real reason (Score:4, Funny)

    by Hoi Polloi ( 522990 ) on Friday August 18, 2023 @08:56AM (#63777640) Journal

    Maybe Microsoft AI is down on its luck and needs something to eat

  • by crunchy_one ( 1047426 ) on Friday August 18, 2023 @09:03AM (#63777664)

    Amazing, you say? Not really, now you can do it too! Safely and securely from the comfort of your home or office! Use my new fool-proof method!

    Simply go to Ars Technica and pick any headlined story. Like magic, it will appear here on Slashdot within hours!

    • by laxguy ( 1179231 )

      yeah but thankfully we dont have to read those elitist snooty Ars commen.... oh.. wait...

  • Half of content is AI-generated. The other half is critiques of AI posts, probably written by humans.

  • I suspect that AI speech will prove difficult to regulate because it so strongly resembles the free speech word salad produced by politicians.
  • It's almost like calling it "AI" in the first place is so wrong as to be beyond marketing hyperbole into 'blatant lie' territory.

    As far as I'm aware, (and I think we'd know *very quickly* if I was wrong) there is NO ACTUAL AI IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.

    Stop fucking using the term. It doesn't (apparently) mean what you think it means.

    • Perhaps you should go to an univrsytiy and starts studying computer science.
      Sooner or later you will learn what the term AI - aka artificial intelligence - actually means.

      Hint: it does not mean what you think it means. And Generative AI is what is is: Generative AI regardless what you think about AI or believe to know about AI.

      • Hint: you don't get to redefine words just to fit your faddish memes.

        Autocomplete is NOT AI.
        Iterative weighted culling of queries and blended search results (which is really what 'generative ai' is doing) is not intelligence.

        Although your reply does make me realize that as human intellect falls to near-vegetable levels, at a certain point autocomplete is functionally about as creative and intuitive as the humans that use it.
        In that context I concede that as "I" recedes, eventually these systems will equal i

        • What intelligence is and what not: has nothing to do with AI.

          You could call it Trabums ... no one would argue about Trabums, because it is just a word.

          You argue about some AI things, and don't realize: it is just a word or a term.

          No idea what the rest of your post is about, Autocomplete? You got hurt by Autocomplete, too?

    • It's almost like calling it "AI" in the first place is so wrong as to be beyond marketing hyperbole into 'blatant lie' territory.

      Not if AI stands for autocomplete insanity.

    • there is NO ACTUAL AI IN THE ENTIRE WORLD

      Now that I think of it, is there an actual Non-artificial Intelligence in the world? Doesn't seem like it when i look around. We should call what humans use as Non-artificial Nonsense for IEEE standardization purposes.

  • When the machine overlord takes over, the food bank will be considered a cannot miss spot for any tourists as it might just have the very thing everyone is looking for: hope.

  • ...human PR & marketing people to me; at least the flippant callousness, disregard for other people's dignity, & inability to just shut the f**k up.

    Well, it looks like OpenAI & Microsoft have indeed managed to reproduce human-like intelligence but PR & marketing people isn't setting the bar particularly high.

    "One day, machines will exceed human intelligence." - Ray Kurtzweil

    "Only if we meet them half-way." - Dave Snowden
  • Why not both?

  • A real WTF (Score:4, Funny)

    by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Friday August 18, 2023 @11:49AM (#63778134) Homepage

    I think what the AI meant to say was: "Life is hard enough; imagine life on an empty stomach." but of course it worded it as an absolute howler.

    There's no such place in Ottawa as "Omega Park". There is a place in Quebec called "Parc Omega", and the purported photo of "Omega Park" was actually a photo of the Rideau Canal. The purported photo of the Rideau Canal is actually a photo of the Rideau River.

    The caption under the photo of the Canadian Museum of Nature reads: "Canadian Museum of Nature is considered to be a national natural history museum and is located in Canada." Gee, thanks for clearing that up!

    SIGH

  • by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Friday August 18, 2023 @01:39PM (#63778398)

    I went there. The waitress was rude - even went so far as to say they didn't want me there. Then they had the temerity to try to give me instant ramen noodles, even though I clearly asked for freshly hand-pulled. I'm pretty sure everything was from packages. I told them they were in danger of a scathing online report, and they ignored me. Would not return.

    • by kackle ( 910159 )
      See, I had the opposite experience: It was clean, uncrowded, had a diverse menu that supposedly is different every visit, tipping was discouraged and it was cheap.
  • I'm sure next we'll hear that the California DMV offices are also great tourist spots with people spending up to two to three hours there per visit. The correlation between where people go and their activity when there are two different things. That doesn't mean a grocery store suddenly becomes a tourist haven any more than mile marker 57 on IH35E in Dallas is at rush hour.

Real programmers don't bring brown-bag lunches. If the vending machine doesn't sell it, they don't eat it. Vending machines don't sell quiche.

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