Generative AI is either the best or the worst thing to ever happen to humanity, depending on who you ask. Existential risks aside, writer Kassandra Cloos wanted to know: Could ChatGPT alone help her plan and execute a successful trekking vacation? So she put it to the test.
“Can you write this again but make it funny?” I asked ChatGPT, when it spat out a detailed itinerary of a three-day hike on a section of the England Coast Path. “I want to laugh out loud while I’m reading this on the beach.”
“Day 3: A Hilariously Charming Coastal Finale,” it wrote back. It promised me a day full of “moments that would tickle my funny bone,” and then proceeded to suggest that I start my day by backtracking four miles to watch for seals at Blakeney Point, which was also on day two of the itinerary. “Step into the day with a spring in your step as you set off from Cley Next-the-Sea. The coastal path unfolds like a never-ending comedy skit, with scenic marshlands and tidal creeks providing the perfect backdrop.”
Hilarious.
I had accepted a challenge to ask AI to plan a town-to-town trek on the English coast and then follow its orders without fact-checking—beyond confirming the existence of the places it suggested. If I’m being honest, I wanted to have a bad time. Aside from making a living from exactly the thing AI purports to do flawlessly in mere seconds threatening to render me obsolete, I am also the sort of person who still sends postcards and handwritten letters. I love off-grid nature trips and the analog ways of doing things, so, naturally, I wanted to hate this new invasion of technology into our personal lives. I wanted it to fail at planning my trip, and miserably. I daydreamt that it would try to send me hiking straight into the sea the way Michael Scott drives into a lake while following his GPS in The Office.
But as I say, it’s not there yet. Several times, I ended up with an itinerary that sounded fantastic, and which I was ready to book, but the links didn’t work, or the hotels didn’t exist, or the towns were in the wrong order, requiring, say, an eastward backtrack on a westward journey. Once, I noticed that it had suggested hiking between towns that are not actually connected by the trail at all.
While GuideGeek claims to search real-time availability for airline tickets and hotels, I found that it could not reliably stay within my budget parameters. I told GuideGeek what I was looking for in a hotel and it made a great suggestion, but often those places were vastly over budget and/or sold out on the dates I needed.
