A Small Missouri Town will use “AI” to attract tourism

How would you feel if your small town was using Artificial Intelligence to bring tourists to your town, how do you know the AI is telling the truth? That is the conundrum one small Missouri town is facing, here are the details...

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According to KCTV 5, the small town of Moberly, Missouri is going to use Artificial Intelligence in the hopes of attracting and keeping tourists in their town. My first thought was..."OK, how is that going to work?" According to the article on KCTV 5, they say...

"Moberly, Missouri...plans to hire a company called Placer AI. The company tracks cell phone data. The city’s Chamber of Commerce says the information collected will be used to help develop tourism campaigns...The proposal is to track those phones once a day to see where the people go in Moberly. The information is then developed into a geo-fenced footprint. The chamber says Placer AI then uses an algorithm to make certain assumptions based on that data."

The article goes on to mention that the leaders of Moberly are going to try to use the data that is collected to determine whether or not the town needs to build a new hotel, which is funny because if you are trying to attract new tourism wouldn't you just want to build a new hotel option for people to stay at anyways? To read the complete article click here!

I am veryyyy anti the use of Artificial Intelligence when it comes to tracking people and collecting data from their phones. I'm sure there are great ways to use AI in medicine, and engineering for NASA or something, but do we really need so much of it in our day to day lives? Can't the local town leaders figure out what they should promote in their town for tourism ads?