I Used ChatGPT to Plan My Vacation, and It Was Horribly Underwhelming

AI can do many things, but can it plan a proper vacation? I recently took a trip to Porto, Portugal, and found that while ChatGPT can bring some positives, they're rapidly outweighed by the negatives.

How I Used ChatGPT to Plan My Vacation

I’ve never used ChatGPT before, but my friends have—and one of them uses it all the time. On a trip to Porto in Portugal, I was intrigued enough to use ChatGPT to explore the city.

None of us had been to Porto, so this was a fresh opportunity. I’d been to Lisbon when I was much younger, as had a couple of my pals, so we knew the sort of trip we were in for. That is an excessively hot few days with friendly locals and plenty of pastel de natas.

There’s a lot to do in Porto, however, and we hit a couple of snags along the way, so we leaned on ChatGPT as our guide.

ChatGPT is perhaps the best-known AI tool. It’s essentially a data aggregate, meaning it’s been trained on a vast proportion of all the information available on the internet and can present results immediately. It has many applications, but I’ve always been wary of AI. Asking ChatGPT to make an itinerary for our trip was an intriguing yet worrying idea.

Note that we didn’t use it all the time. We went to Porto with a few events booked in by necessity. Still, there were plenty of times we needed some guidance. Here’s how ChatGPT did.

What ChatGPT Did Right

So, what did we actually use ChatGPT for? More than even planning places to visit, we used it for day-to-day guidance. That’s partly because we’d already booked, for instance, a tour of the Porto football stadium, simply because you have to—walk-in tickets aren’t available. Similarly, a boat trip can be booked while in Porto, but you get a better guide choice when you buy tickets in advance.

Still, we did have a full day free plus spare mornings or afternoons, so we asked ChatGPT for some tourist attractions.

Porto is beautiful, but there aren’t loads of tourist hotspots. That can be one of the positives of the city, but it can also mean you get some downtime, where there’s not a great deal to do apart from wandering around the shopping stalls or along the Douro River. We’d hoped ChatGPT could help us out, and it did.

It recommended The Chocolate Story, which we enjoyed immensely. It suggested the best place to get the Portuguese sandwich favorite, Francesinha. An incredible number of restaurants and cafes served them, so ChatGPT helped sort the wheat from the chaff. We loved strolling around the Ribeira District, which ChatGPT had highlighted.

Aside from attraction recommendations, however, we relied on ChatGPT to help us get around the city and learn more about it. This included where to keep luggage safe on our last day: we had to check out of our accommodation in the morning, but our flight home was in the evening, so if not for this, we would’ve had to carry our bags around Porto all day.

ChatGPT also suggested pharmacies that were open longer hours when one of our party fell ill. That was a great help (though one of the places suggested couldn’t give out medicine; it was more of a chemist than a pharmacy).

On top of that, ChatGPT gave us handy directions to more obscure locations, which was particularly useful in a city with lots of little alleyways to navigate. Another positive was its recommendation of Bolt, an Uber-like service that would ferry us around the city when somewhere was too far to walk.

What ChatGPT Got Wrong

ChatGPT doesn’t really understand practicalities or at least reacts to limited data without inferring anything. It also just repeats what it finds online, which is often biased information.

Our free day started bright and breezy, so we headed out without our coats. We soon regretted this after a storm amassed overhead. We quickly turned to ChatGPT to ask for suggestions on what to do in Porto on a rainy day. The results were disappointing.

Chiefly, it recommended a trip to the Livraria Lello, a beautiful, elaborate, gothic-style bookshop at the city’s heart. It would’ve been a solid idea, except this store is hugely popular, so much so that there’s always a long queue outside. It’s owing to the public thinking it inspired JK Rowling’s Harry Potter novels, a claim that’s since been debunked. Nonetheless, it’s perpetually busy—whether down to Rowling or not, it’s heartening to see a bookshop so popular.

Ironinya, kami telah meminta ChatGPT untuk cadangan sebegitu sambil melihat baris gilir yang disuruh kami menyertainya. Semua orang dalam barisan itu bersembunyi di bawah payung atau kelihatan murung dalam hujan lebat. Ini sememangnya bukan cadangan yang baik dalam cuaca buruk.

ChatGPT tidak dapat menapis cadangan dengan baik. Ia tidak mengesahkan perkara yang ditemui dalam talian. Pada masa ini, itu mungkin perintah yang tinggi, tetapi jika kita mahu AI terus berkembang, ia perlu memilih dengan apa yang diberitahu kepada pengguna.

Sebagai contoh, saya ingin melawat kedai buku komik di Porto. Saya suka mengumpul komik dalam bahasa asing, jadi ini adalah satu kemestian. Ia mencadangkan Livraria Lello sekali lagi, walaupun sekurang-kurangnya mengakui bahawa ia bukan kedai komik per se. Sebelum itu, ChatGPT mencadangkan tempat yang kedai utamanya berada di Lisbon (lebih 310km jauhnya) tetapi yang menjalankan kedai pop timbul sekali-sekala di Porto.

Memang, penyenaraian pertamanya adalah untuk Mundo Fantasma, sebuah kedai utama di Pusat Beli-belah Brasília, tetapi ia terlepas permata yang kurang dihargai: Livraria Timtimportimtim. Ini ialah kedai yang ditubuhkan untuk meraikan Tintin kegemaran Belgium, tetapi ia juga termasuk pelbagai jenis komik dan barangan yang popular dan tidak jelas.

Ia adalah tempat yang menakjubkan dan indah—namun ChatGPT telah menguburkannya demi lebih banyak tempat yang terkenal. Patutkah Anda Menggunakan ChatGPT untuk Merancang Percutian Anda?

Apakah yang saya pelajari daripada menggunakan AI semasa percutian saya? Pengambilan utama saya ialah ChatGPT boleh berguna, tetapi hanya secara terpilih.

Perkara yang paling menarik ialah mana-mana aspek positif boleh didapati di tempat lain. Bolt diiklankan di mana-mana. Hidung dan mata anda boleh membimbing anda ke restoran yang bagus. Carian Google yang mudah akan memberitahu anda tentang tarikan dan membolehkan anda menempah tiket. Itu tanpa bercakap tentang apa yang perlu dilakukan jika ChatGPT sebenarnya tidak berfungsi.

ChatGPT akan membimbing anda mengelilingi destinasi dengan memberi tumpuan semata-mata pada perkara yang popular. Jika anda ingin memahami mana-mana tempat yang anda lawati, untuk benar-benar memahaminya sebagai orang tempatan, menggunakan internet adalah pertaruhan yang lebih baik. Anda boleh meminta ChatGPT untuk permata tersembunyi, tetapi kapasiti cariannya pada akhirnya tidak memberangsangkan.

Sebut sahaja, ChatGPT boleh membantu dengan perkara seharian. Jika anda ingin menggunakan AI untuk membantu merancang percutian anda, lakukan lebih awal. Bersedia untuk hari hujan. Cari acara dan buat jadual perjalanan kasar sebelum anda pergi. Sediakan rancangan untuk menggunakan pengangkutan awam.

ChatGPT boleh digunakan untuk meningkatkan percutian anda, tetapi jangan bergantung padanya semata-mata.

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