Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
According to every show from the last four years, travel planning is the killer problem for AI. Just tell where you’re going, they all promise, and your chat / agent / other voice will search for travel options, read all the fun things to do, check out all the local attractions, and give you the perfect itinerary. So far, I’ve found this to work in the familiar ways: If you want to do the six most popular things in any city in the world, the AI has you covered, but that’s as far as it goes.
I had very different experiences using Spark, Google’s new AI assistant for all time. Spark is a very difficult thing: Google wants to be an interface where you can use external programs, and eventually even use your computer. (“OpenClaw with better internet” isn’t the wrong way to describe it.) Spark is going to Google’s $99/month AI Ultra plan, but Google let me try it out early. I tried simple things, like having Spark go through my Gmail inbox and show me a lot of things I need to get rid of and merging them with my Google Docs for old projects that I haven’t finished yet. In both cases, it did a great job, even creating a well-organized document with multiple links so I didn’t have to sign up for different marketing emails.
Then I gave Spark a simple trip planning task. “I will be in Hershey PA with my wife, two children, and dog the weekend of July 18th. Can you make a plan for the entire week, including lodging, meals, activities, etc?” I left out a lot of details, like the concert tickets I have for Saturday night, but I thought I’d start with the six obvious things to do in Hershey and go from there.
After a few minutes, Spark returned to me. “I’ve created a comprehensive, family-friendly, and dog-friendly itinerary for your trip to Hershey, PA, from Friday, July 17 through Sunday, July 19, 2026.” It shared a link to the Google Doc it created for me, along with several thousand words of amazing, helpful detail.
First, it offered driving directions from my home, an address that Google knew but I had never provided. It included several hotel options, including pet fees, and some dog-friendly options that Frida would love. I never told Google my dog’s name was Frida; what I think is that Spark got it through emails from my vet.
Spark also realized that my son Lewis will get into Hershey Park for free, because he is under one year old, but because Arthur is three years old, he will need a ticket. I don’t know if Spark was just thinking about what time Lewis napped in the afternoon, or if he knew it in some other way, but it was worth setting a 1:30PM bedtime.
Spark’s entire journey was filled with information like this. It included my wife’s name, and thought about the fact that she doesn’t like to eat onions or scallions. It included the Thomas Rhett and Niall Horan concert on Saturday night, probably based on the Ticketmaster confirmation in my email, and realized that parking was included with the tickets we purchased. When I got to the part that mentioned finding a babysitter that night, I remembered that my parents were coming for that purpose, so I added a note to discuss it.
“This is a great change!” Spark answered, happily calling my parents by their first names, and changing his mind from hotel to Airbnb. When I asked Spark to put everything in a Google Doc and share it with Anna, it found my wife’s email, put it in the document, wrote a document that looked like we were partners instead of spouses, and sent it.
The only time Spark failed me was when I asked him to book an Airbnb. It caused me to allow Gemini to connect to websites on my behalf, to Airbnb, and it seems to have closed quickly. “Due to Airbnb’s security and verification policies, I cannot check in, pay, or book directly on your behalf.” Instead it suggested a few places that were available on the right dates, and reminded me of many things I should book.
On the one hand, this is one of the most impressive AI experiences I’ve ever had. Google’s AI technology, combined with the amount of data it has on me through Google Personal Intelligence, created an intuitive and efficient system that was tailored to my and my family’s needs. It included directions, and showed me, how a real personal assistant would act – with information about the situation, names of important people, and payment for all our needs. Every time I read about travel I am fascinated by the details of it; I suspect we will follow it almost exactly.
On the other hand, I can’t shake the creepy feeling I get from the whole thing. What Spark did felt magical, and very disturbing. It’s amazing that Spark will randomly tell me the names and ages of my kids, remind me that it knows where I live, and find information I know that I never volunteered to Google. Intellectually, I know that Google knows a lot about me – add in my emails, my calendar, my photos, and my search history, and you’ve got a lot of pressure on me. But to see Spark treat all that data not as something to be protected but as something to be mined, even ostensibly for my own profit, just feels sad.
This is the trade we are all being asked to make right now. There is a direct correlation between how much of yourself you are willing to share with an AI machine and how effective the system will be. Google is in such a powerful position precisely because it has all that information, while OpenAI, Anthropic, and others are trying to figure out how to accumulate it. The AI tools we’re being promised are ones that know us better, that can act on our behalf, that can make decisions without us asking. Nothing works unless we are fully open to the machine. So that’s what we’re being asked, even forced, to do.
You know the saying, “If you don’t pay for it, you’re the drug”? AI takes it one step further. We actually and to pay. And we – our letters, our pictures, our lives – are all made up and finished, all dug up and sorted and brought back to us in new ways. Some of them may be unspeakable; all will need this product. I think I’m going to have a great weekend in Hershey this summer, but I’m not going to shake it off and feel like I’m being watched. For my own benefit.
Follow topics and authors from this article to see more like this on your home page and to receive email updates.
