Using AI with the Slow Europe forums

[Pauline]

I finally had a reason to learn more about AI. I do a bit of volunteer work for the charity for my disease (yes, in the UK every disease has a charity, even one as rare as mine) and we did a survey of some of our support group members (150 respondents). I used Microsoft Forms to do the survey online and it puts the results into a spreadsheet. I then uploaded the spreadsheet to both CoPilot and Claude and got them to analyze the results. Both were good but Claude did a better job I thought. It was amazing seeing the results analyzed by the AI.

This led me to think how an AI can be used on the forums. I used Claude for these examples.

Create a list of all your trip reports.
COMMAND List all threads started by member Pauline in this forum

Italy Trip Reports

Trip reports and travelogues for Italy.

www.sloweurope.com

RESULT This gave me a list of threads (title links to forums) for my Italy trip reports. When I paste it here there are no links but within Claude there are links to each trip report.
Here’s the list:
1. Hiking in the Dolomites, Italy in 2020 — Northern Italy, Sep 2020
2. Two Weeks in Liguria, Tuscany and Rome, Italy, 2003 — May 2022
3. Amalfi Coast and Cilento Coast, May 2019 — May 2019
4. Italy – Sicily, April 2014 — Apr 2014
5. Liguria and the Piedmont, May 2018 — May 2018
6. Naples and Positano — Campania, Apr 2016
7. Positano in November 2017 — Campania, Oct 2017
8. Basilicata and Umbria, April – May 2017 — Apr 2017
9. Lazio, Le Marche and Umbria — Sep 2015
10. Puglia and Basilicata — Apr 2015
11. Italy – Orvieto and Tuscany Countryside — Jun 2014

I then asked it to create a Word document with the list including links.

Create a Word document from a trip report.
COMMAND Turn this thread into a word document including photos

Lazio, Le Marche and Umbria

We leave tomorrow for our Italy trip. Our bags are packed and we are spending tonight at a hotel at the airport. Fly London to Rome. 1 night Civita Castellana in Lazio. 9 nights in Le Marche - Valle Nuova near Urbino. 7 nights in Spoleto Fly Rome to London. I planned the Le Marche part of the...

www.sloweurope.com

RESULTS Claude produced a Word document from the thread but without the photos saying the forum blocked the downloads but if I downloaded them it would insert them. So I went to the thread, saved each photo to my photos (I’m using my iPad), then uploaded them to Claude and it created a new word document with photos. Nice!

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I’m making a list of all our European trips, back to our first trip in 1988, next trip in 1992, then regular trips from 1996 onwards. Claude is helping but it is a lot of work pulling information from many places.
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Can you think of other ways to use an AI to better find information on the forums?

 

[Pauline]

I forgot one other thing I tried. I gave Claude links to 5 trip reports for Israel and asked it to summarize the trips and also produce a map showing where we had been. The map was a Google Map but I couldn’t easily copy it. The document was a 2 paragraph summary of each trip. Then I as,Ed to summarize by place instead. That was better.