When AI Goes Off the Rails

And a human solves the problem

Photo by Kindel Media: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-deliveryman-carrying-package-and-mails-looking-lost-and-confused-6867933/

Let’s get real. Artificial intelligence is only as good as the flawed human being who creates the program. And I don’t think I have to tell y’all how that goes.

Gone are the days of a human dispatcher delegating jobs to workers as those jobs come into the home office. With DoorDash, it’s a programmed application that sends out the work. And as you might expect, weird things can happen when thousands of requests per minute overload the system.

So it was yesterday when my phone screen flashed with a delivery. The restaurant was one I’d never heard of, which is odd given I’ve done 8400 deliveries in my zone.

Not to worry. Once I saw the address, I recognized that the corner Indian deli, like so many other businesses that use DoorDash, has 23 different names to hoodwink customers into thinking they’re buying food from an exotic eatery. Thus, a simple deli names itself Vittorio’s Italian Specialty Shop (or something like that) to lure hungry internet surfers.

Anyway — DoorDash has this new quirk in which they occasionally give you the name of the building to which you’re going without enlightening the dasher as to the actual address.

Why they would do this God only knows. Just give me the fucking address, please. Is it really…