AI hiking routes look great on satellite view and fail on the trail — survivorship bias in training data?
Mediocre-Extreme-482 · reddit · 2026-10-06
The author's AI-generated loop near Mount Hood looked great on satellite view and was rated "moderate with wildflowers," but reality involved bushwhacking and a rope-needed creek crossing. The pattern: models smooth over complexity, rounding down elevation gain, keeping washed-out trails in databases, with invisible confidence intervals. Deeper question: since these models train on human reports, GPS tracks, and photos, does survivorship bias — we only upload the good trips — explain the optimism?
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