I know Artificial Intelligence is a touchy subject for some people. The environmental impact. Possible job replacement. Fear of robots. I share some of those concerns too, but at 10:30 pm when I’m trying to figure out a locked Hungarian washing machine, I tend to go for the quick fix.
This was the first trip since I’d gotten familiar with using ChatGPT/Claude, and it occurred to me while standing over this foreign washer — having already tried every combination of buttons I could think of — that AI might be able to help. I took a photo of the display panel, sent it to the app, and within 60 seconds had the model identified, the problem diagnosed, and two possible workarounds. Within minutes the washing machine was running and my good humor was restored.
After that AI helped me conquer all sorts of foreign appliances: locked cooktops, unfamiliar ovens, mysterious coffee machines, t.v. remotes and — most importantly on a hot day— the remote control that runs the air conditioning. No need to contact the rental manager.
But it’s useful beyond appliances too. Driving through Slovenia, we kept passing wooden structures in field after field — elegant, almost architectural, clearly built with care. We finally just asked. Turns out they’re called kozolci (singular: kozolec), traditional racks used to dry hay, corn, and beans in the region’s wet mountain climate. They’re considered a symbol of Slovenian identity and craftsmanship, many are beautifully carved, and some are even listed in the national cultural heritage register. Not bad for something we spotted from a highway at 60 miles an hour. Standing in a Sarajevo bookstore looking for something about the siege, I got a solid reading list in seconds. Trying to figure out which ride app to use in Istanbul — and which one actually shows up faster at the airport — done.
But probably the most useful thing AI did for us was diagnose a CarPlay problem in our rental car. We had a Fiat 500 with 65,000 miles on it — not exactly the latest model. The rental agent assured us CarPlay worked, and sometimes it did. Other times, not so much. When you’re on a remote mountain highway in Montenegro and the directions disappear from the screen, it’s more than annoying. And before you ask — no, we didn’t have a paper map. I hadn’t ordered one ahead of time, and it turns out the world has moved on and gas stations don’t stock them. The cashiers were uniformly baffled when I asked if they had a map. I did find a historical map in a bookstore, which was charming but not particularly useful for finding the motorway.
After a few days of trying different phones, different cords, different outlets, and quietly blaming each other’s devices, it finally occurred to me to ask ChatGPT. I described the car, guessed at the year, and got my answer almost immediately: the display screen in that Fiat would only talk to a phone with a lightning connector. My phone used USB-C. Fortunately Jerry’s didn’t. We found a better cord, plugged it in, and suddenly we had a working display and working directions. I probably could have figured this out eventually with a late-night Google session, but we needed the answer in the moment, on the road.
After that we just used it whenever we were curious about something. What was that big structure going up in the harbor at Rovinj? How much snow does the Vogel ski slope get in a normal year? Not critical questions — not the kind of thing we’d try to translate into Croatian and ask a local — but they made the trip richer. Could AI get something wrong? Sure. But we weren’t relying on it for anything more consequential than curiosity. We just wanted to know, and we didn’t speak Serbian, Slovenian, or Montenegrin.
As for the criticism that A.I. separates us from people, I don’t agree. It reduced the friction that can come from the dozens of decisions that travel days require. Where should we park? How do we buy tickets? Is this restaurant open? It gave us more time to explore and pay attention to the places we were visiting. AI didn’t stop us from talking to the owner of the Sarajevo bookstore. It just meant we already knew what we were looking for when we walked in.
So the next time you pack for a trip, make sure you have some kind of easy-to-use AI app on your phone. And bring a paper map too.
Leave a Reply