By Cheri Sicard
A lot is happening in the world of artificial intelligence (AI) and RVing, and arguably hardly any of it (none of it?) is good. Readers of this website are probably getting used to publisher Chuck Woodbury’s musings on the topic. This week, Jared Gillis from All About RVs (and one of our readers’ FAVORITE RV YouTube channels, with 239K subscribers and 30M views) joins in with the pertinent question, “Is AI ruining RVing?” Jared shares his thoughts in the video below.
For anyone paying attention, there is no longer any doubt whatsoever that AI is influencing the RV world. Jared asks, “Is this a net positive or negative?”
Articles and blogs are one of the biggest ways AI is influencing RVing. I can personally attest that I have long lost count of inaccurate RV blogs, some spewing dangerous misinformation, that has been obviously written by AI. While AI can write reasonably well, it is not always factual. Without knowledgeable folks fact-checking AI, the information may or may not be true. And, sadly, many of these fly-by-night RV websites designed for nothing more than to make money are often neglecting this duty, or assigning it to a low-cost assistant who knows nothing about RVing.
In the video, Jared shows you how this is done. He types in a prompt in ChatGPT and it quickly spits out a very credible-sounding article about DIY RV maintenance versus taking it into the shop. The problem is, it only SOUNDS credible, but to someone trying to learn about RVs who does not know better, it could spell big, expensive problems.
Jared says AI imaging can also be misleading, sending RVers looking for places that don’t actually exist.
Is it all bad? No. Jared says AI and RVing has its place. One example he gives is a virtual assistant called “Campy,” which helps RV parks and businesses answer consumer questions based on information they input.
##RVT1126
I guess the admonition to not believe everything found on the internet has increased by an order of magnitude, or more, with the introduction and refinement of artificial intelligence. Their mere term should be a warning to all. It isn’t “real” intelligence, it’s “artificial.”
I watched most of this video on YouTube to see the reactions and comments. AI doesn’t seem to have a lot of fans (especially amongst us ‘older’ folks).
Misinformation is already causing world changing problems, this puts it into overdrive across ALL topics. It is already difficult to indentify AI content and that too is getting worse all the time. The deep fake videos are astounding and astoundingly dangerous misinformation that can get widely circulated. Interesting times…
Interesting and a bit scary.