Would You Let Artificial Intelligence Book Your Next Trip?

www.awol.com.au

There’s no doubting it – the future of travel is here. Anything from virtual reality travelling and our new passports in the cloud to crazy cool airports and robots controlling (basically) everything – wherever travel is headed, it’s sure going to be interesting. So then, this begs the question – how much of your life will you be handing over to the robots of the interwebs? The internet already runs our lives to the nth degree, so would adding in artificial intelligence to that help us or freak us?

Luckily you can now try it for yourself – albeit on a small scale. Online search engine Hipmunk have introduced a new travel planning assistant called Hello Hipmunk. Hello Hipmunk is powered by artificial intelligence and will take over any and all duties when it comes to planning a holiday. Think of Hello Hipmunk as your own personal assistant – someone who gets to do all those mundane things like checking for cheap flights and finding cool hotels.

It’s also super simple to use – so much so that it’s kinda scary. All you have to do is sign up for an account and begin emailing Hello Chipmunk like you would your travel agent. CC your AI in on group emails or ask it directly for suggestions – anything from where to go at a particular time of year to whether it can look up hotel deals across Europe, for example. Hello Chipmunk will then pop it all in your calendar once it’s booked. Pretty great, right? There will be a whole lot less Googling on your part, so it’ll relieve some stress on that end.

It’s kind of like that movie Her – Joaquin Phoenix’s character lives in a not-too-distant future where computer operating systems with artificial intelligence can talk with you, work with you, and even (spoilers) fall in love with you. These AIs almost completely organise everything in your life – appointments, calendars and even emails.

Possibly the freakiest part is that Hello Hipmunk can anticipate when you’re going to go on a holiday – it checks your schedule for weekends off or even a few annual leave days you’ve got calendared in and then sends you suggestions on events in different cities that you’d be interested in. If you’re headed somewhere for business, Hello Hipmunk will even suggest hotels and bars that are located near your meeting – you know, for when that business lunch turns into a “long lunch”.

You won’t even have to lift a finger for your next getaway. So really, the only question that needs to be answered is – where to next?

(h/t CN Traveller)