[eterm]

There are jobs out there that have always been unreliable.

A classic example is the Travel Agent. This was already a job driven to near-extinction just by Google, but LLMs are a nail in the travel agent coffin.

The job was always fuzzy. It was always unreliable. A travel agent recommendation was never a stamp of quality or guarentee of satisfaction.

But now, I can ask an LLM to compare and contrast two weeks in the Seychelles with two weeks in the Caribbean, have it then come up with sample itineraries and sample budgets.

Is it going to be accurate? No, it'll be messy and inaccurate, but sometimes a vibe check is all you ever wanted to confirm that yeah, you should blow your money on the Seychelles, or to confirm that actually, you were right to pick the Caribbean.

Or that actually, both are twice the amount you'd prefer to spend, where dear ChatGPT would be more suitable?

etc.

When it comes down to the nitty-gritty, does it start hallucinating hotels and prices? Sure, at that point you break out trip-advisor, etc.

But as a basic "I don't even know where I want to go on holiday ( vacation ), please help?" it's fantastic.

[asadotzler]

If you don't care about reliability, repeatability and accuracy, they're great.

[jimbokun]

This should be OpenAI's official slogan!

[whyowhy3484939]

Once they start making deals with the relevant organizations, book rooms, handle insurance, replacement hotels, etc, then they'll replace travel agents. These guys don't just Google a bunch of tickets you know.

[eterm]

We're getting into semantics now, but I'm talking about the kind of person who used to sit in a physical store, waiting for someone to walk by and go into the travel agency.

In the 80's and 90's, this is how most people booked their holidays. It was labour intensive, people would spend some time talking with a travel agent in a store, who would have a good idea of the packages available, and be able to make recommendations and match people with holidays.

The remnants of agencies still provide the same services, but (for the most of us) it's all online, it's all tick-box based, and much of the protection is via ATOL/ABTA.

These services still exist, but they're no longer all over the high-street. Names like Thomas Cook, Lunn Poly, have either been absorbed (mostly by TUI), or collapsed, and largely disappeared from the high-street with just a few left. (Mostly Tui).

And those that are left, have been reduced, much like retail banking, to entering your details into the same websites and services available to anyone, and talking you through the results that the computer spits out, that you could have browsed yourself at home. The underpaid travel agent in the store isn't any better connected than you are. In fact, they're possibly even more pushy about pushing you toward the hotels with the best commission than the website is.

[netsharc]

I imagine a travel agent would have local knowledge and connections, and would know the quality of the hotels they're trying to send to you, a high commission isn't worth it if your customer is unsatisfied and goes to a different agent for their next trip. Of course this is based on the assumption that the customer always wants to use a travel agent (an unrealistic assumption nowadays, because it's so easy to switch to the Internet).

Someone like Rick Steves(1) still goes to the destinations every summer to check out hotels, restaurants and local companies, I imagine someone with more budget would travel with his company rather than try their luck with some booking.com hotel with a high rating...

1: https://www.youtube.com/@RickStevesEuropeOfficial

[eterm]

What you're imagining is what it was like in the 1980s, or possibly now for a boutique place, not the reality of the post-internet high-street travel agent.

You're not realising the reality of the typical high-street worker, and the sheer lack of autonomy that they have in their roles.

[jimbokun]

Seems like the travel agent has been replace by:

1. the travel blogger who writes about places and why you might/might not want to go there.

2. the tour guide who books everything end to end for everyone on the tour and goes along to show and explain the sites.

[jimbokun]

Um, Google and travel sites already replaced travel agents a LONG time ago.

[65]

Yes, which is why it's slightly confusing why programming is being pushed so hard to use with LLMs. For things that don't need completely accurate information, sure. But for programming, data, and factual information, it's surprising to see so many people using LLMs.

[asadotzler]

Code runs or it doesn't, that's a sort of verification feedback that other use cases don't offer, at least not so immediately. Formal code verification is a thing, not so much for verification of say legal citations. Code is language with some well documented rules all over the training corpora. Many other use cases are hardly so well represented in model training. These are just a few of many, many reasons that code is an easier problem than most.

[65]

Code runs or it doesn't... but that doesn't mean it does what you want it to do.

An LLM could generate code that takes raw user input and adds it to a raw SQL query. Does it work? Yeah. Is it a terrible security flaw? Also yeah.

Additionally, if you want a certain UX and the LLM cannot get there but the code works, that doesn't mean it's successful.

[liveoneggs]

I have used it on three big family vacations already and it's definitely a place where "AI" shines in usefulness. It did recommend some out-of-business hotels and things but the broad strokes were good enough to save hours of work.