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Microsoft AI suggests food bank as a “cannot miss” tourist spot in Canada (arstechnica.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/technology

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Late last week, MSN.com's Microsoft Travel section posted an AI-generated article about the "cannot miss" attractions of Ottawa that includes the Ottawa Food Bank, a real charitable organization that feeds struggling families. In its recommendation text, Microsoft's AI model wrote, "Consider going into it on an empty stomach."

Titled, "Headed to Ottawa? Here's what you shouldn't miss!," (archive here) the article extols the virtues of the Canadian city and recommends attending the Winterlude festival (which only takes place in February), visiting an Ottawa Senators game, and skating in "The World's Largest Naturallyfrozen Ice Rink" (sic). Ars Trending Video

As the No. 3 destination on the list, Microsoft Travel suggests visiting the Ottawa Food Bank, likely drawn from a summary found online but capped with an unfortunate turn of phrase.

"The organization has been collecting, purchasing, producing, and delivering food to needy people and families in the Ottawa area since 1984. We observe how hunger impacts men, women, and children on a daily basis, and how it may be a barrier to achievement. 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."

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Rather more importantly:

First noticed by tech author Paris Marx on Bluesky, the post on the Ottawa Food Bank began to gain traction on social media late Thursday. In response to Marx's post, frequent LLM critic Emily Bender noted, "I can't find anything on that page that marks it overtly as AI-generated. Seems like a major failing on two of their 'Responsible AI' principles."

Bender also pointed toward Microsoft policies; one is "Transparency," and reads, "How might people misunderstand, misuse, or incorrectly estimate the capabilities of the system?" and the other is "Accountability," which states, "How can we create oversight so that humans can be accountable and in control?"

This is completely unethical from Microsoft. They're either publishing LLM written articles with no human intervention, or they're underpaying humans to check too many articles to possibly do a good job of it.

So-called AI will certainly change many of our jobs, some for better, some for worse. But it is nowhere near capable of the tasks people are assuming it can do (sometimes with disastrous consequences).

But how can that be? It passed a law exam! Passing a bog standard exam, which will have dozens of past examples shared and well-answered on the internet, is nothing like identifying tourist hotspots and describing them appropriately. Or working out what to say to a suicidal caller. Or deciding what sort of person matches a particular job role.

Machine learning is good at playing chess or Go, and automating the Forer Effect. But it cannot do what people so very desperately want it to be able to do: think.