Artificial Intelligence not very Intelligent

Technology
1

My house has been moved over 500 kilometres, only it has not moved!!!

I have been getting deliveries chez moi from Amazon for more than ten years. At the end of last week, I was expecting a delivery from Amazon when I got a call from the delivery driver. He told me he was outside and could I come open the gate. I told him that I did not have a gate. It transpired he had been directed to a similar address near Annecy, more than 500kms away from me. Anyway he returned the parcel to Amazon, apparently explaining what had gone wrong.

I had a second order awaiting delivery as well. Well yesterday I got a call from another delivery driver, and we had almost the exact same conversation, but this time I asked him to check the address written on the parcel, and it was indeed my correct address. But he was again near Annecy. I asked him why he was trying to deliver my parcel there, and he said he was guided by Amazon’s mapping, which was linked to a bar code on the parcel. He had never read the written address. Anyway again parcel returned to Amazon.

I decided to get onto Amazon to find out what was going on, especially when I had had a delivery about two weeks ago without a problem. Anyway long story short, Amazon’s despatch system was updated the weekend of 13/14 October by Artificial Intelligence, and apparently if the IA could not locate an address it ‘guessed’ it using the nearest alternative ‘to the correct’ address, ignoring the postcode completely. In my case it happens to be over 500kms away, and now all my orders are directed to an address near Annecy. According the lady I spoke to at Amazon, I am not the only one to have been affected by these ‘errors’. She assures me that, in my case, she has updated the system manually and there should no be a problem in the future!

The orders that have been sent back by the delivery drivers will be refunded, and I have to reorder them. They cannot just be redirected.

It seems to me that Amazon cannot trust it’s drivers to read addresses on the parcel and delivery sheet, and everything is now pre-programmed, and it is very difficult to amend things.

Well done AI.

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2

That sounds awful, especially for me who orders from Amazon 3 or 4 times a month on average. But it hasn’t happened so far but I am now wondering, who is this so-called Amazon driver? I have never met one. All my parcels come via the postman who knows exactly where I live. In fact a simple postcode and no further info would find me via La Poste.

Have you always had direct deliveries from Amazon?

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Not only Amazon.

I used to have all sorts of issues with DPD here in the UK - their driver would regularly claim they “couldn’t find” the address.

We have a house name rather than a number, which i concede doesn’t help, but basically what the drivers were doing was putting the postcode into a satnav, driving to that location, looking around them, and giving up if they couldn’t see the house.

The centre of our postcode area is about 100 metres up the road from our house which they would have had to drive past to get there.

And the kicker? On DPD’s instructions, I had uploaded a bunch of relevant info to their app, including my phone number, my business details (which has a marker in Google Maps), and also a photo of the front gateway and a “What Three Words” reference, which is accurate to a location three metres square.

None of this information was being used by the drivers.

It’s better now thankfully - they all seem to know where I am. :slight_smile:

In the UK at least Amazon seem to use whichever delivery method saves them money - small stuff comes with the postman, bigger stuff by their self-employed van drivers from Weybridge, “before 1.30pm” deliveries usually by someone in a private car, and they occasionally farm some deliveries out to DPD or DHL when they are busy, such as Black Friday weekend, or Xmas.

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The thing that made me wary initially was that it had a completely different tracking number than usual, and the tracking indicated that it was being delivered by Amazon.

Like you, most of my Amazon deliveries come by the post.

Apparently in the larger French cities and their catchment areas, Amazon do have their own delivery vehicles. In this case Lyon, which also covers some surrounding areas, which includes Annecy.

5

Usage of subcontractors locally by the big name firms causes a lot of these nightmares. Basically the parcel gets handed or delivered to subcontractor, but without :

(1) all the information that you lovingly entered

(2) any change of date to one when you’re home. Even if you received the confirmation of successful change of date from the big name delivery co while the parcel was stil in transit and well before any delivery attempt could have been made.

(3) after the inevitable failure of delivery due to lack of information passed to them-, the subcontractor will still not receive any date you’ve rearranged. So they will keep trying , and claiming a delivery failure, serially every day after day. Even if you’re away for the week and the date you’d already rearranged is for next week.

Or, if it’s via Jardel here, you’ll try to deliver again but only on random days that suit your own runs… Completely ignoring the delivery dates arranged and rearranged.

This may not disappear when you come to France. In fact I had another subcontractor pitch up today in my absence when all comms with DHL said it would be delivered in Monday 4th November ie in 4 days’ time.

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This is nothing to do with the delivery firms or their drivers.

This is AI updating Amazon’s delivery software and making a right mess of it, for a minority of addresses.

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The problem I have, whoever is sending me the item and whichever company is to deliver it [and never the twain will talk to each other] is that at the top of my lane is this.
image

Every time I book a delivery I add a note in the ‘special notes’ box about this problem. The sellers never inform the delivery people.

The default delivery vans are the ‘Box Luton’. They don’t fit past the 1m75cm pinch-point just before my house [red mark] 120m away.

I can see the spot where they pull up. The guys who are doing a proper job then text/call me. I tell them I’m in and they should walk the120m to my street door. Sometimes I open the kitchen window, waving and hailing them. They walk down and deliver.

The poor blokes delivering my kitchen units and more from IKEA ‘into a room of your choice’ … what a schlep.

All to often I see them get out of the van, see the width restriction sign, get back in and drive away. I then get a text telling me to collect form some pointe de relais.

The other day DHL reported two attempts to deliver a small parcel. I knew for sure 'n certain this was not true. I’d been on the lookout both days for a van pulling up in the usual spot. And the puff about ‘the door tag’ turned out to be applicable only in the USA.

DHL told me I should go to their depot to collect - at Caen, 1 hr drive away! I refused. Eventually I persuaded them to drop it at a pointe de relais I chose. They said they did not know this drop spot. I pointed out it was one of the options on their website.

One pair of mutts did try to get down the lane in a Luton. They got to the point where they could go no further. They backed up to a point where one of them could get out, open the back doors and get my item out. Back in the van, they started reversing up the lane. It’s stone walls both sides and they’d had to fold the wing mirrors in.

Backing up this steep lane, with no wing mirrors, was a process of slipping the clutch, edging back a couple of meters and repeat. At the point where the steepness of the incline of the lane doubles I saw clouds of smoke - the clutch had burned out.

This van blocked our lane for the next 18 hrs before the tow truck eventually recovered it.

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8

AI generated image seems not to understand basic human anatomy.

image
image802×1224 83.7 KB

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I’m sure she served our table the last time I visited a Wetherspoons …

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Who was footing the bill? :smiley:

And I hope you toed the line and behaved like a gentleman… not a heel.

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Ha, the version of this I saw had some things highlighted as a way to spot AI generated images, like the pixelated lady in the background, the light switch (?) on the wall behind her, etc… but not the, y’know, other thing :joy:

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Corny.

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Yes, I’ve seen the annotated version. I think the picture over her left shoulder is wonky as well.

I haven’t discounted the possibility that the anatomical anomaly was deliberate.

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14

I’m here all week…

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Hoi! Feet. Corny. A bit of appreciation please. I was pleased with that. :rofl:

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VG!! I must he half asleep this evening as I didn’t appreciate the subtlety of it at first! :smiley: :smiley:

You’re a leg-end in your own lunchtime :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Seemed off the hoof to me :rofl:

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18

I thought it was quite instep…

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Thought you’d be in toe

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I use Chat GPT to help me learn French. It was mixing up subject and direct object yesterday. Makes a variety of mistakes regularly. It forgets instructions. I’ve had ridiculous statements from Facebook generated by AI. Artificial Intelligence? …er no. Real Stupidity more like. Some way to go yet.

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