Lonely Ride Up the Mountain

This past winter will be one for the record books because of how warm it has been. Right now is the end of March but the weather thinks it is the end of April, if not May. Then Mother Nature decided to throw us a curve ball today with a cold front that brought temperatures at my house down to almost freezing. Unfortunately my truck did not like the sudden drop in temperature and decided to not let the radio work on my drive to the morning gym, Alta ski area. This is the 3rd time it has happened in the 7 years I have owned the truck. The simple fix is to allow the truck to warm up slightly, turn it off, and turn it back on. As the drive is not very long, I just drove to the ski area without the radio.

I had hoped my wife would like to ski with me for an hour this morning. She is not a fan of the freeze/thaw cycle we are having right now. In spring skiing, the snow starts out frozen solid. Imagine an ice-skating rink stuck on the side of a mountain. It is like that and if you don't know how to carve turns, skiing can be a little scary. Without my wife to join me, the ride up the mountain felt extra lonely.

There are also a number of displays that show up on my radio like time and outside temperature. Without the radio working, I couldn't see those either. I like to know the temperature so I can see it change over the 4000 vertical feet I climb to get to the ski area parking lot. Generally there is a 10-degree Fahrenheit difference but I had no idea today. All I could do is guess.

It is amazing how I have come to appreciate little modern conveniences for the short drive to the ski area. I thought about that and how technology provides feedback about the world around us. Something as simple as knowing the correct time is very comforting. Couple that with all the information we can get at our fingertips thanks to Smartphones and the Internet and we have the ability to be very aware of what is going on around us. Unfortunately we do not all take advantage of that information and there are a lot of ignorant people in the world. But that is a topic for another post.

The iPhone is Still a Poor Phone

Today I started with several meetings. Normally I would take them at home and use my home Internet connection. However I had a short break between my two morning meetings and my afternoon one and I wanted to get some exercise. My favorite winter exercise is skiing and so I drove the 25 minutes to Alta and used my phone for the meetings. I also had my computer if I needed it but I wanted to try something new to see if it would work.

My company uses Microsoft Teams for all of our meetings. Fortunately you can install Teams on your mobile phone for free. Yes, they want you to have an account with them but they also allow you to log in with just a meeting ID and password. I copied the information for my meetings onto a PostIt note and stuck it to the back of an Android phone I got to replace my home land line. When I got to Alta, I didn't bother getting out of my car and just logged into the first meeting.

I never really carry my Android phone anywhere because it is so large. That one quality made it perfect for my meeting this morning. Looking at a tiny screen can be tough for meetings and I wanted the largest one possible without having to pull out my laptop. The meeting went well as did the one after it. Then I could go ski for an hour before having to head home before my next meeting.

My experience this morning reminded me how poor my iPhone is as a phone or in this case how poor it is as an Internet connection. Lately my iPhone has lagged significantly with presentations to the point my view has lagged by several slides. That was not the case this morning. When I carried 2 phones it never was a contest as to which phone performed better. If I actually needed to talk with someone, I preferred anything other than my iPhone. I thought 5G would fix that for Internet connections but discovered that isn't the case.

Now in all fairness to Apple, my current iPhone is a 12-mini and needs to be replaced. I hope that Apple has spent some time improving their phone capabilities. Unfortunately given their past track record, I doubt that is the case but am hopeful. 

Artificial Intelligence Being Wrong

I recently visited Alaska to do some skiing and spent time away from my home ski areas Snowbird and Alta. First off, Alaska is a whole new kind of cold when it comes to skiing. I'm glad I opted to bring my warmest gear. 

While driving to the airport after a day of skiing at Aleyeska, I got a call from my ski buddy Jim. He said that AI told him Snowbird would be closing for midweek skiing at the beginning of April. Normally Snowbird stays open daily until it gets close to the end of the season and then it closes during the week and is only open on weekends. That normally doesn't happen until May. This is important as my buddy Jim will be coming to Utah for a week in April to do some skiing and that is kind of tough to do if the ski area is closed.

Yesterday I visited Snowbird and made sure to ask around if they announced any changes in their schedule. They have not. This begs the question how AI came up with a false schedule change. The answer is very important as it will help you understand why AI often provides the wrong answer to questions.

There are multiple ways that AI came up with an answer to when Snowbird would switch to weekend only skiing. The simplest answer is someone speculated on a date and the AI found such a posting and incorporated it into its knowledge base. This often happens in real life. Someone will state a guess as fact and we all believe the person. My dad once told me that magnets are created by hitting a piece of iron with a hammer really hard. While that may be one way to create a magnet, that is not how they are made. I recently corrected his misunderstanding. Doing the same thing with AI is a bit more involved.

Another way that AI can come up with false knowledge is through inference. We are having a particularly warm winter here in the western United States. When temperatures get above a certain point, snow starts melting quickly. This week we are expecting record highs and AI could recognize that when the average temperature gets above a certain point, Snowbird switches to weekend-only skiing. Unfortunately temperature is not how Snowbird determines when people are done skiing. They look at hotel reservations at their lodges as well as a number of other factors and will try to keep the daily schedule as long as Mother Nature allows.

The important thing to gather from this post is that Artificial Intelligence is often wrong. I don't know how many times I have asked Google a question only to have it spit back the wrong answer. While I have not kept close statistical records, I feel like I get the right answer from AI only about 20% of the time. It may point me in the right direction but I always verify the answer and augment what I am told with real human intelligence.