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."
This is most likely from the current trend of wealthy foreign students teaching each other that the food bank concept exists in Canada. MS AI made this most likely from various social media posts telling each other how to abuse it.
There are innumerable accounts of young adults driving up in fancy cars, going into the food bank, leaving with armloads of goods then immediately throwing away everything they don’t want.
It’s a major issue for the Canadian food banks since they are not allowed to turn anyone away.
Excuse me? This is a real thing that is happening? The fuck
I’m sorry, this, for once, seems like an actual job for social media.
I don’t see a problem with doxxing and cyberbullying anyone who tools up to a food bank in a late-model beemer.
So sickening
Why??? Like what motivates someone to do this?
Cuz it’s free for them.
Do you have a source for this? I worry about stoking anti-immigrant bigotry with unsubstantiated accusations.
All I can find is this CBC article talking about the many actually poor international students who increasingly use food banks to make ends meet. Not surprising given the cost of housing compared to even just a few years ago.
One of the legal requirements to be an international student in Canada is that you have enough funding to be self reliant.
There is zero cause for an international to ever require the food bank.
Here’s a viral example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfogy5kcfCU
Guy also has videos on how he’s invested in housing in Canada. He’s absolutely not poor.A single youtube video of an immigrant being a jerk is not data, or reputable reporting. This is Trump style rightwing fearmongering. It’s shocking to see this kind of thing on Lemmy.
There is zero cause for an international to ever require the food bank.
Do you really believe this?? Like the rest of us, an international student might not have budgeted for a several hundred dollar monthly increase in rent and food relative to previous years. Even some domestic students are living in tents in Canada.
I’m going to guess that MS AI determined the food bank is a tourist destination because it learned that more and more people are going there due to the rising costs of … everything. It also probably learned that people don’t like starving to death.
HUMANS LIKE FOOD. THEY ESPECIALLY LIKE FOOD WHILE ON VACATION. THIS PLACE HAS FOOD IN ITS NAME. IT PROBABLY HAS HUMAN FOOD. HUMANS WOULD ENJOY VISITING THIS FOOD BANK WHEN ON VACATION.
“Popular with locals:”
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.
Wasn’t a mistake. AI thinks we should redirect our leisure time.
“consider going on an empty” - yeah, i’m gonna consider something, smartass… you just give me a reason… bucket of bolts…
I just spent $9 on six potatoes. MS might actually be spot on.
When there are good initiatives like this that should only be used by the intended audience, they get exploited and eventually shut down. Screw the exploiters! How do they even justify it to themselves?
With food prices being so high, visiting a food bank makes a lot of sense.
It might be time for a published AI cringe community.
… but, but, but if you listen to all the doom and gloom online, this same AI technology is going to take all our jobs!1!!
This is peak comedy to be fair. AI might have a good writing future after all.
We wanted them to take the boring jobs so we could devote our time to art and leisure, but instead they’re creating art and we’re still stuck in the boring jobs with no time or money for leisure. 😭
I dunno, these type of comments have the same vibe as “see! it snowed last night, global warming isn’t real!”. Yes, this individual incident makes it seem we’re fine, but overall it’s still treading towards “we’re fucked”
I think AI is a powerful and useful technology that can help humans in many ways, but it is not perfect and sometimes it can make mistakes or produce unexpected results. The article is an example of how AI can generate content that is inappropriate or insensitive, without understanding the context or the meaning of what it is writing. This does not mean that AI is incapable or useless, but rather that it needs to be supervised and evaluated by humans, who can provide feedback and guidance to improve its performance and quality.
AI is not a replacement for human creativity, intelligence, or judgment, but a tool that can augment and enhance them. AI can also learn from its own mistakes and improve over time, as long as it receives the right data and feedback. For example, Microsoft has apologized for the article and said that they have taken steps to prevent such errors from happening again¹. They have also removed the article from their website and replaced it with a message that says "this page no longer exists."²
I hope this answer helps you understand the abilities and limitations of AI better. 😊
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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).
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.
That last line is an example of the kind of empty platitude (or embarrassing mistaken summary) one can easily find in AI-generated writing, inserted thoughtlessly because the AI model behind the article cannot understand the context of what it is doing.
Microsoft partner OpenAI made waves with LLMs called GPT-3 in 2020 and GPT-4 in 2023, both of which can imitate human writing styles but have frequently been used for unsuitable tasks, according to critics.
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.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
