Microsoft's AI lists Ottawa food bank as a top tourist attraction

[midian182]

Facepalm: In yet another story on the dangers of believing the content generative AI produces, MSN.com's Microsoft Travel section posted a piece created by the technology that listed the Ottawa Food Bank as a "cannot miss" attraction. The article also praised the food bank as being an excellent spot for hungry visitors.

Tech author Paris Marx noticed that Microsoft had listed the food bank at number 3 on a list of top recommendations for Ottawa visitors, sitting behind the National War Memorial and attending an Ottawa Senators hockey game.

Microsoft says the content on Microsoft Start, formerly MSN, comes from algorithms that comb through hundreds of thousands of pieces sent by partners. The Redmond firm says it's combined with "human oversight," though that appears to have been missing in this instance.

The list of recommendations included descriptions for each entry. For the food bank, the statement read: "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." Yikes!

The article has now been deleted, unsurprisingly, though The Verge has uploaded a screenshot to Imgur if you'd like to see it in all its horrific glory.

The ironic thing here, of course, is that Microsoft laid off dozens of journalists and editorial workers at its Microsoft News and MSN organizations in 2020, replacing them with AI.

This is just the latest incident in which an AI has managed to generate something that a human would have (hopefully) flagged. Last week brought news that New Zealand supermarket chain Pak 'n' Save's GPT 3.5-powered Savey Meal-bot, designed to suggest meal plans for users after they enter details of any food they have left over, was offering up recipes that included chlorine gas and ant-poison-and-glue sandwiches.

Generative AIs are a long way from being a reliable source of information – even Bard creator Google warns that people should check its responses using a search engine. One person who isn't a fan is Michio Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Center who often appears on TV. He recently compared the technology to "glorified tape recorders."

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https://www.techspot.com/news/99835-microsoft-ai-lists-ottawa-food-bank-top-tourist.html

 

[wiyosaya]

IMO, if you have to check AI results with a search engine, its worthless. To me, AI is an overblown and overhyped search engine with all the search engine's inherent flaws. There's no point in using it as it would be easier to just research whatever you would like an answer to yourself and wade through the BS from the search engine.

And the companies trying to cash in on this fad think we should double the time we waste by using AI because we have to verify what AI says?

Once again, I'll say its more appropriately titled AHI for "a$$ hole intelligence," at least as I see it. Definitely not worth my time.

 

[sorten]

Does Microsoft own OpenAI? I thought they were just a major investor, but I haven't kept up. Or are they using a different engine for MSN?

 

[BuckarooBonzaii]

Using AI to search are for naive and lazy people which companies and politicians love. In the 1995 Judge Dredd movie the robot says "Eat recycled food. It's good for the environment and okay for you". We just may have this one day.