I’ve been receiving a lot of messages lately from friends and acquaintances asking me to review their ChatGPT-curated travel itineraries, and believe that this trend is highly indicative of what’s going on with AI right now. In general, I feel that people are putting too many eggs in the AI basket without understanding how it reaches certain conclusions. Rather than treating AI like a magic black box, I believe it is first important to understand its inputs and mechanics before putting faith in its recommendations. Thus, I have decided to share my approach to taming AI to plan my food and wine-fueled adventures, how I provide it with the right datasets, and how this is analogous to consumer sentiment around broader use cases outside of travel.