A teen tried to navigate Canadian mountains with Claude. His trek ended in an emergency rescue

3 days ago by supersquirrel to c/techtakes

The incident is the latest to raise questions about the growing reliance on digital maps for wilderness navigation

e8d79 29 points 3 days ago

“The main thing is: do not blindly rely on AI as as a route planning tool. It can never substitute for good education, good training, a good experience, good decision making in the field.”

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Eyekaytee 20 points 3 days ago

In July, three people were rescued after they planned a route on the Howe Sound Crest Trail using Google Maps, which gave them wildly inaccurate time estimates, suggesting a route that often takes as long as 14 hours could be done in just over five

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alcoholicorn 8 points 3 days ago

Its like that in vietnam too, 6 hours is 8 or 9 in good conditions and riding double the speed limit.

Last month, google maps tried to send me down a road that is under water for 3 months of the year, after several miles of construction.

I switched to waze after google kept routing me off the highway and through dirt trails between farms or dense, winding neighborhood allys to avoid interchanges. At one point google hated a highway so much I had to put traffic stop every 20 miles or do or it would tell me to turn around and make a 1 hour detour instead of following a straight, empty highway.

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Steve -1 points 3 days ago

God forbid you turn off navigation and just look at the map

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gerikson 6 points 3 days ago

Good luck finding a recently updated map LOL

Also, I often drive alone, and when I have a passenger she's literally blind and isn't helpful for map reading.

I've been a Waze user for 15 years and it's fucking great.

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swlabr 6 points 3 days ago

probably worth knowing that Waze is a bit sus, https://www.snopes.com/...

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moonshadow 1 point 2 days ago

I'm in no way suggesting you need to use one, but... Are you under the impression that paper maps became difficult to source?

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tardigrade 16 points 3 days ago

I recently read about a similar story with Deepseek. Don't understand why someone blindly trusts a LLM.

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Moonrise2473 2 points 2 days ago

It also happened with Gemini https://www.sfgate.com/...

It's becoming the new "our latest model also "accidentally" hacked someone"

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tardigrade 3 points 2 days ago

One major point in this respect is that these things are mainly reported in the West about Western LLMs, while in China similar stories related to Chinese LLMs are censored to avoid negative reporting on the country.

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altphoto 0 points 3 days ago

I asked Claude how to pee. It all made sense but unfortunately I now need to cleanup.

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