Adding an AI tool to Google Earth shook our trust in maps that has been centuries in the making

edited by Lisa Lock , reviewed by Alexander Pol

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Add as preferred source An 1818 map of western Africa shows the continent bisected by the mythical ‘Mountains of Kong’, based on the explorations of Mungo Park. Credit: John Pinkerton's A Modern Atlas via Wikimedia Commons Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, Europe's cartographers traded on their reputation for accuracy and detail at a time of huge societal change. But as demand grew for increasingly detailed maps of the world to support industrialization at home and colonization overseas, they didn't always get it right.