I do love ChatGPT – and I see its potential – but I also see how AI reminds me of myself as a child, someone with high intelligence and a good frame of reference, but who is quite frequently “off the mark” due to lack of appreciation of how the real world works in practice as opposed to in theory.

For example,

I asked ChatGPT to take all of the Canadian provinces and give them new names based on “historical and cultural context”, and some of the names are pretty much spot on – Ontario becomes Huronia, Alberta is Athabasca, Manitoba is Assiniboia, Quebec reverts to being Canada again, and Newfoundland reverts to being Vinland.

Those are hardly “wrong answers”, they make total sense. But when I said “yes” when it asked me if I wanted to visualize these province names on the existing map of Canada, it came out with this adorable little clusterfudge:

• It places the name for British Columbia (New Caledonia) on the spot where Nunavut/Northwest Territories are located, hundreds of kilometers from the BC border.
• It puts Assiniboia (Manitoba) on Alberta, Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota, not Manitoba.
• It omits Athabasca (Alberta) altogether.
• It places Qu’Appelle (Saskatchewan) somewhere near Utah.
• It calls Quebec “Hunand” instead of “Canada” like the text response said. What the hell is Hunand? The French way to spell China’s Hunan Province? That would be pronounced like “ooh non”.
• Vinland (Newfoundland) is omitted, but Abegweit (Prince Edward Island) is labelled roughly where Vinland should be.
• Mi’kma’ki (Nova Scotia) is placed down near Rhode Island!
• There’s a new province altogether not even mentioned on the text results called “Canacia”, which is hilarious to me, it’s like “Latvania” or “Genovia”.

Also, it thinks that Montana, Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming have merged into one superstate (LOL). Let’s call it “MontUtahoDing”.

I love how adorably wrong it gets all of this. But the underlying issue with this is that ChatGPT doesn’t quite know how to associate these names with the proper locations of these provinces, it clearly forgot to consider Canadian territories vs. provinces, and it’s all kind of proof that humans aren’t going away anytime soon.