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Microsoft AI suggests Ottawa food bank as a “cannot miss” tourist spot

arstechnica.com

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Re: Microsoft AI suggests Ottawa food bank as a “cannot miss” tourist spot

#101

Post by CosmicShadow »

hospitalJail wrote: post #38
zogrodea wrote: post #4

That sounds like a surprisingly fortunate mistake, because you would hope recommending others to go to a food bank will encourage (and actually make some of) them to give something to the needy there. The suggestion the AI makes to consider going into it on an empty stomach could help the tourist to empathise with others who are less fortunate, because those are people who feel hungry every day. (Although the suggest…

I don't understand what food banks are for. Does Canada have something like Food Stamps/WIC? Food is absurdly cheap, and not all food needs to be cooked/prepared.

Food is not absurdly cheap in Canada, and has gone up an incredible amount in the last 2 years.

Re: Microsoft AI suggests Ottawa food bank as a “cannot miss” tourist spot

#103

Post by barbazoo »

nsavage wrote: post #93
mabbo wrote: post #69

I know this is funny and LLMs and all that, but it's worth mentioning that the Ottawa food bank are good folks and can always use donations. https://www.ottawafoodbank.ca/ I recently learned that a friend from high school passed away. I hadn't seen her in twenty years almost. She'd been living rough in Ottawa for a few years and the Ottawa food bank was almost certainly one of the groups that had been helping her out…

I live in Ottawa and have been donating there for years. Just wish they would send me less junk mail.

If you're talking about physical mail, orgs like that usually respond positively to asking them to stop.

Re: Microsoft AI suggests Ottawa food bank as a “cannot miss” tourist spot

#104

Post by smileysteve »

Food Banks can be massive regional operations; and their volunteer programs often share, in a great presentation, data about the needs they fulfill.

The CFO of my regional food bank was a startup leader and angel investor, led many local social events, and brought hackathon projects that the food bank and other non profits in the area had.

If you told me that the Atlanta Community Food Bank warehouse was a cannot miss tourist destination, I might agree. Google would probably agree - after all I also like touring car factories and research centers.

Re: Microsoft AI suggests Ottawa food bank as a “cannot miss” tourist spot

#106

Post by tnel77 »

mabbo wrote: post #69

I know this is funny and LLMs and all that, but it's worth mentioning that the Ottawa food bank are good folks and can always use donations. https://www.ottawafoodbank.ca/ I recently learned that a friend from high school passed away. I hadn't seen her in twenty years almost. She'd been living rough in Ottawa for a few years and the Ottawa food bank was almost certainly one of the groups that had been helping her out…

Replying to this since the comment I want to reply to is flagged:

It’s okay to fall out of contact with people. You have no responsibility to keep up on every person you have ever been friends with. Some of my best friends are people that are busy living their own lives and then we find time for each other after a five year gap because we both happen to be in a city for work. Get some drinks and catch up. Don’t let people convince you you are supposed to keep tabs on everyone in your life at all times.

Edit: To people downvoting this comment, can you tell me why you disagree? I’m not against checking in on friends and supporting them in times of hardship, but I don’t think that anyone is obligated to take a roll call of their contacts every week/month. If you disagree, tell me why, please.

Re: Microsoft AI suggests Ottawa food bank as a “cannot miss” tourist spot

#107

Post by 2big2fail_47 »

smileysteve wrote: post #104

Food Banks can be massive regional operations; and their volunteer programs often share, in a great presentation, data about the needs they fulfill. The CFO of my regional food bank was a startup leader and angel investor, led many local social events, and brought hackathon projects that the food bank and other non profits in the area had. If you told me that the Atlanta Community Food Bank warehouse was a cannot mis…

I’m a bit skeptical that startup leaders and angel investors go well with non-profit / social organisations.

Re: Microsoft AI suggests Ottawa food bank as a “cannot miss” tourist spot

#108

Post by zogrodea »

38 wrote: post #16
zogrodea wrote: post #4

That sounds like a surprisingly fortunate mistake, because you would hope recommending others to go to a food bank will encourage (and actually make some of) them to give something to the needy there. The suggestion the AI makes to consider going into it on an empty stomach could help the tourist to empathise with others who are less fortunate, because those are people who feel hungry every day. (Although the suggest…

the suggestion is terrible, full stop. it would be akin to someone standing outside a movie theater yelling at people because they should be spending their time fighting world hunger. sure, they might be right, but its kind of missing the point.

I don't think that's a fair comparison. Someone yelling outside a theatre would be causing an active nuisance and provoking people.

What's the worst this unaggressively-worded and unintended (unintended by those who deployed this LLM) suggestion will do? I would think most people would think "that's a weird suggestion" and move on after a moment's thought, continuing to do what they did before.

It's easy to say someone yelling will significantly aggravate others. I don't think that's the case here.

Re: Microsoft AI suggests Ottawa food bank as a “cannot miss” tourist spot

#109

Post by FreshStart »

INTPenis wrote: post #22
PeterisP wrote: post #5

Did they automatically detect that it became very popular as it had many people visiting it regularly?

Yeah probably a lot of wifi clients there. Isn't that how Google maps measure activity? By monitoring the wifi traffic of android phones?

You can also use that sort of maps to send data via physical mesh net just hopping from one phone to another, never touching a isp.

Re: Microsoft AI suggests Ottawa food bank as a “cannot miss” tourist spot

#110

Post by beefpies »

PretzelPirate wrote: post #73

It bothers me that the headline says this is the result of AI but the article says: > The article is credited to "Microsoft Travel," and it is likely the product of a large language model (LLM) Can journalists not investigate claims before writing articles on them? Yes, it's probably LLM-generated, but it wouldn't have been hard to find out and have facts in hand in the article.

What should they have done to prove these articles were generated?
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