My dad uses Google Maps, and he mentioned that it seems to be getting worse. Like, giving him directions that are obviously worse than alternatives. Has anyone else here experienced this?

37 points

Yeah, twice this month. It’s taken me through a dirt road (where we got stuck in the mud) and a closed road. Its also told me to turn at places where I cannot or where I must not. I’ve also checked that the car directions are selected and not “bike” or something else.

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10 points

A few weeks ago I talked with a big truck driver and he said that Google maps sent him through a mud track. At the end the truck got stuck between two village houses. He lost one our to get out with the help of several neighbors. Its time to change to “Organic maps” or Osmand.

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5 points

I tried organic maps once and it told me to do a u turn as the last instruction in the route, when I actually needed to turn right into my destination. I rarely drive these days but I’ll definitely try it again to see how well it does.

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19 points

If you see this type of issues you can open a note in OpenStreetMap (register not required). One of the OpenStreetmap volunteers will fix the issue. Take a look at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Notes

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11 points

Mine is fine, but somehow my wife’s gives her the worst possible routes that are counter intuitive. We checked all settings about avoiding / not avoiding tolls, ferries, etc. She just some gets crap directions.

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6 points

Does it give her bad directions on one device or everywhere she is signed into Google?

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1 point

She only uses a phone for everything, so checking on a computer login is not easy to do.

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3 points

Wow, that’s strange. Have you tried comparing the routes it gives you to the same places, side by side?

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4 points

Yes, it will reroute her to the worst possible wat to get somewhere, while mine will be direct. At first I thought she had bus or walking enabled, but it is set on car, and we have same route settings. I don’t understand it, unless the google algorithm looks at your driving history or something like her phone GPS satellites used are different and somehow location info is different–even though the car tracks on the street possible.

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2 points

That must have something to do with like A/B testing or something. Like she’s in the guinea pig cohort where she gets the “experimental” routes.

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1 point

I’ve had mine tell me to drive along a rail line

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4 points

The search results are inconsistent and they started including advertising on the map but I haven’t noticed a decline in route finding. Perhaps there were accidents or traffic jams being routed around?

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80 points
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Makes sense. Google has been replacing skilled engineers with tail-eating AI regurgitation engines, which are getting progressively worse as they eat their own shit.

But I’ve been told those regurgitation engines are about to get really smart and replace all skilled labor.

So maybe it’ll be fine.

Or maybe, as we’ve already started to see, more and more useful stuff will only be available via the Internet wayback machine, until they kill it.

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0 points

When AI gets applied to robot bodies, real world results will be able to trim out bad knowledge. Currently because AI only feeds on internet content, all the AI has to eat is human content and AI content.

AI will drift away from accuracy until it gets embodied at which point it will start to get more accurate.

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3 points

Just have a nuclear reactor to run the LLM on the robot and you’re all set

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2 points
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Real world experience can help, but what we have now is also too stupid to recognize when it’s succeeding or failing. It just greedily gobbles up inputs and feedback indiscriminately.

There’s currently no way to know if the necessary advancement, to advance independently of humans, is 2 years or 2000 years away.

Even so, nature tells us that advancement probably isn’t coming at all. It’s not needed, so long as there are billions of humans available to partner with.

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6 points

Yes. It’s hard to make out the map with all the pinned ads sometimes, and I’ve had multiple times this year where it has taken me to the wrong place. Every time that happens, I boot up Organic Maps and get right to my destination.

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5 points
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Lolwut? Didn’t realise they were serving ads on maps too, that’s hectic

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7 points

You know how you can see pinned restaurants with their name and a fork and knife icon? Businesses can pay to show their full logo and get priority in search results/what shows first on the map as you zoom in.

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