Unintended Consequences

Great Moments in Unintended Consequences: DoorDash, Google AI, and French Wikipedia (Vol. 16)

Good intentions, bad results.

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Great moments in unintended consequences—when something that sounds like a great idea goes horribly wrong. Watch the whole series.

Part One: We Knead Dough

The Year: 2019

The Problem: Restaurants aren't signing up for DoorDash.

The Solution: Prove its value by adding restaurants for free—without notification or permission. Once presented with the sales data, restaurants will sign up in droves!

Sounds like a great idea, with the best of intentions. What could possibly go wrong?

Turns out, people don't like it when you mess with their business. Restaurants that never offered delivery were suddenly getting complaints and bad reviews about orders arriving cold. The owner of AJ's Pizzeria in Kansas was surprised to find his restaurant on the app, and that his $26 specialty pizza was being sold for just $16. So he ordered some. A lot, in fact. He even filled boxes with plain dough to increase his profit on each transaction (unlike DoorDash, which lost $668 million dollars in 2019).

Like most jokes, it's all in the delivery. 

Part Two: Prompt Replies

The Year: 2024

The Problem: Google's search dominance is being challenged by ChatGPT.

The Solution: Develop an AI to provide helpful summaries and answers to Google queries.

Sounds like a great idea, with the best of intentions. What could possibly go wrong?

Turns out, the internet is…well, the internet. The AI began to parrot facts and tips from sites like The Onion and Reddit—insisting that former President Barack Obama was Muslim, that gasoline can be used in cooking, and recommending eating rocks as a vital source of vitamins and minerals. It even suggested adding glue to pizza, a tip internet sleuths tracked down to a decade-old Reddit post by a user named "Fucksmith." 

But that does lend credibility to its assertion that parrots can cook.

Part Three: Wikipedi-duh

The Year: 2013

The Problem: There's a Wikipedia article about a classified French military radio installation!

The Solution: Demand Wikipedia delete the page.

Sounds like they've never heard of the Streisand effect! What could possibly go wrong?

It turns out, that's not how Wikipedia works. Since facts in the article were sourced from a publicly available interview with an Air Force Major stationed there. Wikipedia balked at the idea that the page contained classified data and refused to delete it without further clarification. At which point French authorities said, "Oh, that makes sense, never mind."

Just kidding.

They summoned the president of Wikimedia France and threatened him with arrest and imprisonment. He deleted the entry but made sure to alert others that reposting the page would be a crime. The next day a Swiss contributor restored it—and the ensuing controversy briefly made it the most-read page on French Wikipedia, which is now available in 38 different languages. 

And yeah, we added a link.  

Great moments in unintended consequences: good intentions, bad results.

Do you know a great moment in unintended consequences? Email us at comedy@reason.com.