Parkrun is a free 5km run held at venues all over the world. I used to be a keen Parkrunner so was quite excited to see they had implemented an AI support chatbot (https://www.parkrun.co.za/).
That’s where the excitement ended. The chatbot is poorly implemented and does not give any useful information. All it does is gives links to pages and articles with no specifics.
The AI chatbot has little knowledge of useful information. I asked “do you have runs in Namibia” and its response was “I’m having trouble understanding. Can you elaborate or ask in a different way?”
Why is it so bad? Why are so many AI chatbots so bad? My answer is lack of machine learning. If you don’t give the AI chatbot any information, it will not have any answers. What they need to do is provide more knowledge and monitor questions from their users/runners. As soon as they see their AI chatbot ‘has trouble understanding’ they should update the answer. It takes seconds to do.
Weirdly ChatGPT and Meta AI give slightly better answers, but both list a run that has been discontinued and leaves out runs that are still being held.
Gemini by Google gave the right answer:
“Yes, there are parkrun events in Namibia! You can find them listed on the official parkrun website:
Windhoek parkrun: Located at the Windhoek Golf Country Club. https://lnkd.in/dmfi3fHE
Swakopmund parkrun: Held at the Lagoon Walkway in Swakopmund. https://lnkd.in/dMJSUJcv
Walvis Bay parkrun: Takes place at the Lagoon Walkway in Walvis Bay. https://lnkd.in/dNncxws5
These events offer a great opportunity to get active, meet new people, and enjoy the beautiful Namibian outdoors while participating in the global parkrun community.”
Parkrun should and could easily and quickly fix their own information each time their AI chatbot can not answer. It would take only a couple of weeks before their AI chatbot knows the majority of the information requested by the runners.
Until then they are giving AI a bad reputation.
Subscribe to our newsletter and keep up to date with useful AI news.