To want to tell posters who say "I asked ChatGPT for you OP"......

[RudePie]

To fuck right off.

I've seen it on numerous threads today.

If I start a thread, or reply to someone I want to hear from real humans.

If I wanted to ask ChatGPT I don't then I would do that.

Maybe anyone who replies with "I asked ChatGPT for you and they said....." could have an instant ban and/or a fine.

but if they can't respond without using Chat CPT they DON'T know how to respond! So just...don't.

It's not like OP dies if they don't respond or you lose your access to MN if you don't respond to every thread you open. Not answering if you don't know the answer is an option, indeed the preferred one rather than wasting everyone's resources, effort and time.

All I can do here is say again: I’m an expert in a subject. I know the answers to certain questions. When I ask the questions to AI LLMs like Google AI or ChatGPT, it gives me back incorrect answers. It is often very, very wrong indeed. It is unfailingly confident, polite and full of shit. (To simplify: AI is programmed to perform ‘best guesses’, and those guesses are usually terrible.)

That’s why I don’t use it, and have no time for its use in academia, on MN, and in life generally. I’d rather see a few typos than AI use on here. I’m here for the conversations, with women of all ages and backgrounds and people in general.

Chat gpt is great at slightly more nuanced questions than a search engine can handle.

For example, Google would be fine for asking what the opening hours are for the shop, or the meaning of a word etc.

I like chat gpt for questions like, 'which campsites within 20 miles of x town have unallocated pitches, allow campfires and are near a stream or lake?'

It's not accurate enough to use a a fact finder, but it can aid research really well.

I also like it for formatting and making my own words coherent.

And it's still shit, and in my experience critically wrong about something at least 80% of the time. And the other 20% I suspect I just didn't know enough about the subject to catch the wrong answers.

It couldn't even accurately pull information about a product from a comparison page last week, and each time I use it and it's worse than useless I can't help wondering - all these people who say it's better than them at their jobs or whatever, how shit were they before if this tech is outperforming them 🙈

Please don't do what ?

Sunrise sunset times for Stockholm. Just click the dropdowns to set the date.

Sunrise and sunset times in Stockholm, June 2026 (timeanddate.com)

Temperature ranges and expected weather just as easy.

Stockholm Weather – Complete Year-Round Climate and Forecast Guide (visitstockholmcity.com)

Not far enough north for a midnight sun sort of cruise. But here it is - yours.

Oceania Europe Cruise, 23 Nights From Southampton, Vista, June 12, 2028 | iCruise.com

Map attached of where you are going.

I don't see why you need AI for that. I don't even have google. It's banned where I am.

Genuine question. And I am not meaning to be disparaging or anything. Not at all. Just genuinely interested if you are ok with using the internet in general ? I worry about my DD in that regard. She is 14 and is most certainly of the "app" generation. And I do try to get her to look things up so she can learn.

Yep. Totally pointless. I even had someone telling me I've never used it before when I said we don't want AI spew on the boards?!

Yes, but now you have to do that for every single port - not just the end destination. And when I add more requirements such as give me the best side to view arrival and departure, the top 5 attractions per port, distance from the port in miles and link to the the YT video with the most likes in the last 3 years, etc, etc, you can see how this starts to become unbearable as a research exercise.

Again, please don't do all of that. I know how time consuming it will be. That's the whole point.

No one here (I really hope) is relying on chatgpt for critical information. That would be stupid.

I am not going to do all that because I do not need to. It's a cruise, so the information will be aboard I would have thought. Tours and excursions arranged.

You have a cruise in 2 years time. Why do you need to know the distance from the port to the city center for every location now. And as other posters have said, you really do need to fact check everything your AI is telling you.

I would not say that is a big selling point of AI tbh.

Thanks. You do then agree that you cannot assemble all the information requested within an hour (it takes hours was my claim)?

Well you probably could, but I don't know why you'd want to.

You'll be able to see on the day how the ship is approaching the port and position yourself accordingly, it's not necessarily going to be the same every time due to weather, tides etc. Check the weather forecast on the day when you're in range of on shore internet if you don't have it on the ship.

I'd probably have a nosy on google maps for distances and what's available to do nearby and as for wanting to view the 'YT video with the most likes in the last 3 years' well just why? That's probably some nonsense made by some influencer being paid to promote curated content. Not something I'm interested in.

Well, you did move the goal posts a bit. The original info you said you wanted I got in as much time as it took me to sip a cup of tea. Then you expanded it. And yes, give me an hour and a ream of paper in the printer I could very likely compile a full ring binder with all your "required" expanded info.

But why ?

I am from pre internet days. When a trip took planning and mapping. And that was half the enjoyment. My thing was cycle touring. Buying the maps, working out routes. What to see, where to stay. That was much of the whole thing.

After that it was different countries armed only with a lonely planet. But again, much of the thing was the planning.

Now if I go somewhere new, I just use my phone. It's all there in the palm of your hand.

I mean, why do you need to know what time sunrise is in a certain city 2 years before you go there ?

I mean, why do you need to know what time sunrise is in a certain city 2 years before you go there

I can tell you that without even consulting ChatGPT or a website. It's about 3 or 4 am in those places at that time of year. Certainly way before anyone who's on a cruise will be getting out of bed.

It’s because of the idiotic posts that are on here sometimes asking something that you could google and get 💯 accurate answer for. Things that aren’t nuanced or situational

It’s because of the idiotic posts that are on here sometimes asking something that you could google and get 💯 accurate answer for.

A lot of the time you don't even need Google. Just go straight to the website of the appropriate government department or the university or institution or company in question.

I appreciate that you are probably not used to dealing with someone with OCD! It's a combination of a cross to bear and a super-power (I am the organiser for many people!).

I didn't really move the goal-posts:

"One recent use case was to ask it to look up a cruise in 2028, list all the ports, the arrival and departure times, the sunrise and sunset times, and the average daily temperatures and precipitation."

And you were nowhere near providing me with all of that info in a table of detail within an hour. I know how to look up the data without AI. I was simply remarking about how much time it saved.

For information, the sunrise and sunset times help me plan when and how to take my photographs and videos and therefore when I can book trips and order meals. It's all in the detail!

That is why I wonder if many people using AI are maybe not familiar with using the web.

To expand on your thing of going to a specific website, I am an Engineer. And say I want a steel with certain specifications. My first post of call is an old fashioned book. A materials book. Then I would use the web to find stockists of that steel. Maybe there is a trade name for something similar, that sort of thing. If I were to use AI, I need to do all that anyway to double check what the AI says.

A friend has a similar technical job and he has tried AI to summarize international standards for his product. He says it is near useless. Wrong info etc. It is actually dangerous to depend on it.

And I think that maybe if people are not used to using the web like that, then they will think AI is fantastic.

Quote : "I appreciate that you are probably not used to dealing with someone with OCD!"

I am pretty sure you just moved the goal posts again.

So how long does it take to double check all the info AI gave you ?

Edit to add sorry. Will you be double checking all the info you got from AI ? Or will you just accept it as all true and accurate, 2 years before your trip ?

To expand on your thing of going to a specific website, I am an Engineer. And say I want a steel with certain specifications. My first post of call is an old fashioned book.

Yes, I think the majority of people don't know how to use the internet for research. I'm a historian. A lot of the information I want is in original documents, old newspapers etc. I also look at articles in academic journals.Some of these I can access on Find My Past or jstor or other sites, but AI has no clue. I once read the AI overview for somewhere I was researching and it had confused two or more places with the same name.

For information, the sunrise and sunset times help me plan when and how to take my photographs and videos and therefore when I can book trips and order meals. It's all in the detail!

I can tell you without looking it up that sunrise and sunset times in northern Europe in June will not have any impact on mealtimes. It will barely get dark.

The data isn't critical and it passes the "reasonableness" test so doesn't need the precision testing that I employed for Y2K'ing my finance systems. It took chatgpt 1 second to return (and me 5 minutes to format exactly as I like it!).

Not sure what all this goal-post stuff is about. I was simply explaining why I, personally, wanted all that data and loved getting it hours quicker than it would take you using the old methods.

I was around pre-internet but I'm one of those pensioners who likes to be on the cutting edge.

I’m not sure what you’re even trying to say here.

But no matter.

So what will you do re planning for your cruise for the next 2 years ? Or is that it done ? 5 mins on ChatGPT and it's filed ?

Nope. I think I told you already, but this initial parse of the data (1 second on chatgpt) enables me to then better evaluate all of the potential excursions - both provided by the cruise-line or third party, partly to see how they will fit in with my optimal photography/videography schedule based on the sail-in and sail-away data.

In the hours saved, I've been able to quickly move on to getting chatgpt to plan/suggest a German Christmas Market 7 night trip, by train, from Aachen to Basel, including a night in Trier. This will save thousands on the cost of an equivalent trip by river-cruise.

It's all in the spreadsheets and ready to go. It's an OCD thing! It's why I'm interested in what other uses people have found for chatgpt that have saved them time and money. I can't buy more time - none of us can.

Don't trust the cruise details. I've just asked for bus details to a local superstore and it has given false information twice that would leave somebody trusting it stranded in a very dodgy industrial estate, one that would involve a 45 minute walk through a sewage treatment plant, one through a very private site for travellers, one walking through a river and three travelling into the next borough twice where they'd be waiting for a bus that doesn't run there. Oh, and one where the time travelling would leave them stranded on the side of a common where murder victims have been dug up on more than one occasion.

Yes, I do actually know the real route, which involves two changes at completely different places and one different mode of public transport (compared to the previous direct route that got withdrawn). It's on Tfl. And AI insists that it goes to a completely different location unrelated to the superstore.

But so many people would blindly trust what AI says when it just makes shit up - and no amount of replying 'but the Tfl site doesn't say it stops there' answered by 'Sowwy, my bad, here's some other false information that would also put you at risk' is a substitute for a relatively accurate web search.

You are entirely right. I have given you false information 11 separate times over the course of this conversation, including lying about the routes themselves, inventing connections, and falsifying the number of errors I made to save face.

It even lied about how many time it lied.