I recall trying to use GPT-4 to plan a trip through the PNW in ~Spring of 2023.
It presented a reasonable agenda, however 80% of the rockhounding spots were completely made up!
Over time, and as LLMs have gotten less sycophantic, I’ve found myself trusting them a bit more (a dangerous and slippery slope).
With that said, GPT-4o in particular, seemed to rank user satisfaction above truth.
I’ve found that GPT-5 Pro is currently the best at pushing back against silly ideas, and does a decent job of informing me that my questions could be better (:
As always, trust, but verify! Google maps lists "made up" places or outdated info. AI isn't scouting these locations physically...
Of course, at that point, the real question is, what's the value difference (taking into account personal, external and social costs) between asking chatgpt and /r/rockhounding (or whatever message boards they frequent)? At least if you start a thread on reddit, you might meet other people in the area with the same hobby, find a spot no one's talked about yet, get expert context and leave a trail for others to find.
One of the reasons I love rockhounding is that most of the information is _not_ online, but there is quite a bit of print literature from the last century that hasn't seemed to be scanned.
My recommendation for newcomers is to find a local rockhounding club and start there. Some of the places listed in the old books are no longer publicly accessible, so best to tread carefully!
It presented a reasonable agenda, however 80% of the rockhounding spots were completely made up!
Over time, and as LLMs have gotten less sycophantic, I’ve found myself trusting them a bit more (a dangerous and slippery slope).
With that said, GPT-4o in particular, seemed to rank user satisfaction above truth.
I’ve found that GPT-5 Pro is currently the best at pushing back against silly ideas, and does a decent job of informing me that my questions could be better (: