I previously mentioned that I've been using Google Now on my phone. That's Google's artificially-somewhat-intelligent personal assistant app. For the most part, it just sits in wait and occasionally offers a helpful hint, such as the time it will take to drive home under current traffic and weather conditions. But there have been some strange moments. For instance, on February 1st, it told me I'd walked 16 miles during the month of January, up six miles from December.
But the real head-scratcher came with the traffic predictions. Generally it's been pretty good at understanding which places I drive to on a regular basis. But recently I got a warning that it was time to leave for an event listed in my calendar. This was an hour and twenty minutes to go, which seemed odd since I had set the event's location as "Victoria Park", which I live within sight of. I had been planning on leaving ten minutes early. The warning came with a place on the screen to press for driving directions, so I tapped it just to see what kind of circuitous directions it would give me.
It turned out that it had ignored the Victoria Park I live next to. Instead it had assumed I meant Victoria Park in London, Ontario - a city I don't often get to, and I don't think I've ever been to its Victoria Park. All this in spite of the fact that I did a fair amount of those 16 miles of walking in this Victoria Park.
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