Google keeps pushing AI into just about everything it makes, and Maps is no exception. Now you can ask it hyper-specific travel questions instead of typing "diner" and hoping for the best. A travel writer of a self-described Luddite persuasion recently took the feature for a spin on a family trip to New Jersey, and her writeup over on MSN is worth a read if you've been wondering whether this stuff actually works or is just more screen noise.

I haven't dug into her full findings line by line, so I won't put words in her mouth. But the question she's asking is the right one, and it's the same one I'd ask: when you hand your travel decisions over to an algorithm, what are you giving up? Anybody who's ever trusted an online review from 2019 knows the internet's information has a shelf life. Places close. Hours change. The barbecue shack that was there last spring is a vape shop now.

I've got a foot in both camps here. I love a good paper map, and I still keep county road atlases in the door of my truck because cell service in the Ozarks is a suggestion, not a guarantee. There are stretches of Shannon County where your phone is a fancy camera and nothing else. So I'm never handing my whole trip over to an algorithm. That's just how it is.

But I won't pretend the old way was pure either. How many of us have driven past the same gas station for years and never known there was a smoking-good barbecue shack behind it, because nobody ever told us and we never thought to ask? A tool that helps you find the diner with the pie, or the bait shop that's actually open on a Tuesday, that's not cheating. It's the same thing as asking the fella at the counter, except the fella is a server somewhere and doesn't know a crappie jig from a spark plug.

My own take, for what it's worth: the AI is a fine starting point, but it won't replace talking to people who know the ground. The waitress who tells you the trout are hitting at the second bridge, the guy at the parts store who knows which gravel road washes out after a hard rain, no app is going to give you that. The best travel advice I ever got came from a woman at a Casey's in southern Missouri who drew me a map on a napkin. I still remember that napkin. I don't remember a single thing an app told me last month.

My rule of thumb: use the tool to get close, then use your mouth. Let the app find you three restaurants within striking distance of the interstate exit, then ask the hotel clerk which one the locals actually eat at. Ten seconds of conversation will beat ten pages of AI summary every time.

If you're headed out on a fall drive, and I know I am, give it a try yourself. Just don't let it talk you out of the stop you'd have made anyway. Some of the best mornings of my life started with a wrong turn and a hunch, and no app ever had a hunch in its life.