4 ms·

For fun I planned a holiday entirely with LLM's lately, and followed through. It used good models and did a lot of searching, including searches in other langu

by skylurk 4mo ago

For fun I planned a holiday entirely with LLM's lately, and followed through. It used good models and did a lot of searching, including searches in other languages. It got nothing right, riddled with fake places and times. It also found some weird and unique places I never would have considered. I had a blast, brought me back to traveling pre-internet, requiring a level of spontaneity I had forgotten we used to depend on. 100% recommend it.

wahnfrieden 4mo ago
What was a “good model” and harness? I would expect decent results using say Codex with 5.5 xhigh to research and verify an itinerary. 5.5 Pro with search would also be promising.
- skylurk 4mo ago
  I suspect it would perform admirably well with 'Paris' or 'Copenhagen' (see sibling comment), but if you want to have some real fun try 'Southern Spain' or 'Rural Malaysia'.
pookieinc 4mo ago
To counter, we did the same with a trip to Copenhagen for 7 days and it got most paths correct. Train routes, places to visit with kids, restaurants, reservations, weather, most of it was great. There were a couple mistakes of course here and there, thankfully we did our due diligence, but by and large, we plan to do this for future trips.
- orrito 4mo ago
  I feel like one city is enough focus to actually get good results. If you plan a trip where you move between different (smaller) places problems start to arise
lukan 4mo ago
That was funny, thank you. I am now reminded of a short trip with less tech savy folks, where I also on the trip noticed that the plan was a bit .. not working. And the person organizing it complaining to the bus driver, why they were not going what the internet told him, they were going. The internet being ChatGPT.
diroussel 4mo ago
I found that Deep Research mode in Gemini was able to give me a well planned 4 day trip to a major city. I told it my preferences and of the group members, where we arrived and departed, at what times. I gave it my itinerary and then asked it to plan two new itineraries and also suggest a location to book a hotel that was convenient for the early flight on the last day. I went away for 20 mins and gave me a 20 page document with a good summary and decent options. I did choose some of the activities it suggested. I did this 10 months ago. It’s probably better now. But Gemini has access to google maps, so it can estimate travel times, and know which lunch places are near which sites and which hotels have good reviews. So if you want AI to work for travel panning you need to ground it in good data.
- grey-area 4mo ago
  Or maybe there are just a few complete trips to major city in the training data that it could copy from? I imagine major destinations are much easier.
  - steve1977 4mo ago
    I think that's a large part behind the "success" of LLMs... people vastly overestimate their uniqueness.
    - JohnBooty 4mo ago
      It’s really one of the most flabbergasting things about discussing LLMs with the naysayers. There are a lot of extremely legitimate concerns, like the environmental impact and so on. But I just laugh when they point out that LLMs are merely clever regurgitators of their previous inputs… as if this isn’t how we as humans operate nearly all of the time. People realllllllllly want to think they’re special snowflakes.
      - grey-area 4mo ago
        It is not in fact how humans work at all. Ask a human to plan a trip: They do research, Pick destinations led by their own experience/likes/dislikes Compare to other guides Plan itineraries so they can get there Check and share Ask an LLM to plan a trip: It takes the prompt and continues it based on weights in the training data. If there is no data it picks the most likely thing (maybe made up). If there is it’ll mostly add things from that data. Maybe it’ll make tool calls and pull in data that way too but you can’t actually trust all the details. These two processes are so different, it’s important to understand how they work, which is nothing like a human.
nickpp 4mo ago
I've been planning vacations with ChatGPT's Deep Research since it became available. Absolutely brilliant! From finding areas with favorite activities for each parents, teens and kids to discovering the do-not-miss attractions and scheduling our vacation between them - it is invaluable. I've seen places I never knew existed in countries I've never been to before and speaking languages I did not speak. Very few mistakes and lots more flexibility and understanding than the travel agents I used before. I do write long prompts though with lots and lots of info about our family and what we like to do. Not yet good at finding, filtering by our criteria, comparing and booking available accommodation yet, but it's getting there.
kakacik 4mo ago
Its not pre-internet travel, rather backpacking. I do it to this very day, by far the best and most rewarding way to travel, the further and more exotic the better. It has a downside - I'll never do these pre-arranged trips where one is in complete luxury bubble, interactions with locals are the best part of experiences. What a waste of potential. And yes its mostly compatible with kids, it depends more on specific location than mode of travel (ie avoiding malaria/dengue/etc. regions)
somat 4mo ago
The juxtaposition between what perhaps the best single use case I have seen for AI and how bad of an ad for it is killing me. I love it. "I told my bumbling assistant to plan a trip for me and he got nothing right but I enjoyed it because the chaos introduced a certain spontaneity and whimsy missing from my life"

by skylurk 4mo ago

wahnfrieden 4mo ago

What was a “good model” and harness? I would expect decent results using say Codex with 5.5 xhigh to research and verify an itinerary. 5.5 Pro with search would also be promising.

skylurk 4mo ago
I suspect it would perform admirably well with 'Paris' or 'Copenhagen' (see sibling comment), but if you want to have some real fun try 'Southern Spain' or 'Rural Malaysia'.

pookieinc 4mo ago

To counter, we did the same with a trip to Copenhagen for 7 days and it got most paths correct. Train routes, places to visit with kids, restaurants, reservations, weather, most of it was great. There were a couple mistakes of course here and there, thankfully we did our due diligence, but by and large, we plan to do this for future trips.

orrito 4mo ago
I feel like one city is enough focus to actually get good results. If you plan a trip where you move between different (smaller) places problems start to arise

lukan 4mo ago

That was funny, thank you. I am now reminded of a short trip with less tech savy folks, where I also on the trip noticed that the plan was a bit .. not working. And the person organizing it complaining to the bus driver, why they were not going what the internet told him, they were going. The internet being ChatGPT.

diroussel 4mo ago

I found that Deep Research mode in Gemini was able to give me a well planned 4 day trip to a major city. I told it my preferences and of the group members, where we arrived and departed, at what times. I gave it my itinerary and then asked it to plan two new itineraries and also suggest a location to book a hotel that was convenient for the early flight on the last day. I went away for 20 mins and gave me a 20 page document with a good summary and decent options. I did choose some of the activities it suggested. I did this 10 months ago. It’s probably better now. But Gemini has access to google maps, so it can estimate travel times, and know which lunch places are near which sites and which hotels have good reviews. So if you want AI to work for travel panning you need to ground it in good data.

grey-area 4mo ago
Or maybe there are just a few complete trips to major city in the training data that it could copy from? I imagine major destinations are much easier.
- steve1977 4mo ago
  I think that's a large part behind the "success" of LLMs... people vastly overestimate their uniqueness.
  - JohnBooty 4mo ago
    It’s really one of the most flabbergasting things about discussing LLMs with the naysayers. There are a lot of extremely legitimate concerns, like the environmental impact and so on. But I just laugh when they point out that LLMs are merely clever regurgitators of their previous inputs… as if this isn’t how we as humans operate nearly all of the time. People realllllllllly want to think they’re special snowflakes.
    - grey-area 4mo ago
      It is not in fact how humans work at all. Ask a human to plan a trip: They do research, Pick destinations led by their own experience/likes/dislikes Compare to other guides Plan itineraries so they can get there Check and share Ask an LLM to plan a trip: It takes the prompt and continues it based on weights in the training data. If there is no data it picks the most likely thing (maybe made up). If there is it’ll mostly add things from that data. Maybe it’ll make tool calls and pull in data that way too but you can’t actually trust all the details. These two processes are so different, it’s important to understand how they work, which is nothing like a human.

nickpp 4mo ago

I've been planning vacations with ChatGPT's Deep Research since it became available. Absolutely brilliant! From finding areas with favorite activities for each parents, teens and kids to discovering the do-not-miss attractions and scheduling our vacation between them - it is invaluable. I've seen places I never knew existed in countries I've never been to before and speaking languages I did not speak. Very few mistakes and lots more flexibility and understanding than the travel agents I used before. I do write long prompts though with lots and lots of info about our family and what we like to do. Not yet good at finding, filtering by our criteria, comparing and booking available accommodation yet, but it's getting there.

kakacik 4mo ago

Its not pre-internet travel, rather backpacking. I do it to this very day, by far the best and most rewarding way to travel, the further and more exotic the better. It has a downside - I'll never do these pre-arranged trips where one is in complete luxury bubble, interactions with locals are the best part of experiences. What a waste of potential. And yes its mostly compatible with kids, it depends more on specific location than mode of travel (ie avoiding malaria/dengue/etc. regions)

somat 4mo ago

The juxtaposition between what perhaps the best single use case I have seen for AI and how bad of an ad for it is killing me. I love it. "I told my bumbling assistant to plan a trip for me and he got nothing right but I enjoyed it because the chaos introduced a certain spontaneity and whimsy missing from my life"