HomeCruiser_2026_09_Sep_Oct_AI

How AI Helped (Sort of) My Roof Rack Odyssey

By Larry Lempert

You may have thought that the Cruiser was the one obscure corner of the media environment where you could escape the incessant chatter about artificial intelligence.

Wrong!

(But if you've really had it up to the gunnels with the AI gabfest, there will be no offense taken if you jump over to the article in this Cruiser on canoe jousting.)

I just couldn't ignore AI's omnipresence when I turned to researching boat racks for a replacement vehicle. I'm no power user of AI. I'm just your average Googler, and I was doing consumer-paddler due diligence.

Much of the chatter of late has to do with anthropomorphizing AI. Guilty as charged. Having engaged in many hours of roof rack research, I can report that even in the relatively mundane context of consumer purchase (no rogue AI agents here), it's hard not to refer to the back and forth as a "conversation." Gemini, as Google calls its AI model, is so darn nice!

Its tone and language were upbeat, with assurances such as "the overhang is highly manageable," "the canoe will naturally align perfectly with the car's footprint," and "the front of the canoe will elegantly clear the windshield." While not quite edging into sycophantic, Gemini often was enthusiastic about my choices. It took seriously and discussed at length my need to avoid boats slipping, heads getting whacked by protruding bars, and car components being damaged. Gemini said, for example, "Your concern about the front end hitting the roof is incredibly valid."

When it made mistakes and got caught out, Gemini apologized politely. "High rocker saves your roof line [because] the gunwales curve sharply upward toward the sky," it said, despite moments earlier acknowledging that canoes are to be placed on the crossbars upside down. I pointed out the discrepancy. "You are completely right," it said, "and I apologize for that mental flip." No video link provided as promised to illustrate boat-lifting technique? "I apologize about that link omission. Let's make sure you get the exact visual layout for this technique," Gemini said. How can you not like a computer program that acknowledges and apologizes for its errors, and then seeks to correct them?

The questions and answers went on for quite a while, especially since Gemini's answers tended to end with mostly on-target suggestions for additional questions. Each subsequent answer remembered—usually—and took account of what had come before. (Google calls this "maintaining context.") By the way, a word on process: The "share" icon after each Gemini answer produces a URL that recreates the entire thread. Recent threads also are saved in a sidebar on the left and can be regenerated or searched. I'd been copying and pasting individual answers (by way of the copy icon) into what became a 20-page document; relying on the thread tools was a lot more efficient.

On Target

Gemini provided a lot of good information in a fraction of the time that regular search result link-clicking would have taken. For example:

• It homed in on a vehicle design feature that turned out to be dispositive in moving me to Yakima after a paddling lifetime with Thule: that is, on the newer generation of the car, a roof taper causes spacing between the side rails to be narrower at the back than at the front. Customers seemed to find that the way the Thule bar attached to its foot pack could keep the feet from sliding inward far enough, except with unhelpfully short bars.

• Gemini walked through options for loading boats over the tailgate spoiler, raising enough problems that I chose Yakima "CoreBars," which are hollow and can accommodate a slide-out side-loading extension tube. (Highly recommended for people with back problems, not to mention very short people.)

• Gemini gave weight data and model numbers and compared product prices instantly. And yet …

Off Target

Gemini also committed its share of errors that weren't just easily noticed bloopers (like the canoe placed right side up on the rack) but, rather, could have led to poor decisions or purchases of the wrong thing. Several of these errors were associated with that slide-out extension, the Yakima BoatLoader EVO.

Having settled on 60-inch bars, with reasonable AI-supported hope if not certainty that life-threatening head injury was unlikely due to the shape of the car, I asked if the bars would extend far enough from the roof to allow a canoe to be side-loaded—placed with one end on the bar and then lifted from the other end, without risk of the upper end sliding off. Gemini gave its blessing. I was skeptical, and when I finally installed the rack (yes, this story does end with successful installation), it was clear that this method of side-loading would risk catastrophe (defined as scraping or denting the side of the car). I really did need that BoatLoader.

With enthusiastic approval, Gemini listed a half-dozen places to buy the BoatLoader. Clearly I was getting overconfident, as it did not occur to me to find the BoatLoader prior to buying the CoreBars. Only after the CoreBars purchase did I sit down to order the BoatLoader (breach of common sense!), and only then to discover deep into the individual websites that it seemed to be out of stock everywhere on the planet. This made sense when I finally learned from a human (they still have those) at Yakima that they stopped making the BoatLoader several years ago—2023, as Gemini informed me when I belatedly thought to ask that question.

Presciently, Gemini had given me a Plan B, assuring me that Yakima made a bushing (if you can say what a bushing is without looking it up, you're more mechanically inclined than I am) that would allow the earlier generation of Yakima BoatLoader, made for round bars, to be used with the aerodynamically shaped CoreBars. This meant that either the original BoatLoader or the EVO would be fine if I could find one used. And I did turn up a BoatLoader on Facebook Marketplace. The seller helpfully included a photo. Hmmm, was this the original or the EVO?

I uploaded the photo. Gemini authoritatively pronounced it to be the EVO. Except that the seller messaged me that her BoatLoader was good for round bars only. With this information in hand, I asked Gemini about the photo in a new search the next morning, and it authoritatively pronounced it to be the original BoatLoader, round bars only.

No problem—the bushing! Except that my Yakima human told me in no uncertain terms that there was no such part that would allow the original BoatLoader to be used with CoreBars.

And there I would have been with CoreBars and no side-loading extension. Gemini, after all, sternly warned me not to try rigging something up myself, a caveat that my mechanical friends will no doubt scoff at. But Gemini redeemed itself by finding one more BoatLoader vendor. A phone call to Burlington, Iowa, found a less-than-thrilled employee at said outfitter, who was uncertain but called back hours later with a yes. So Yakima's CoreBars and Timberline Towers, with a BoatLoader EVO tucked inside the end of one bar, now sit atop the car with adequate clearance after an installation process the gory details of which I won't attempt to describe, except to say that Hercules would have been challenged to turn the provided torque screwdriver to the requisite degree. (And now I know what a torque screwdriver is.)

Friend or Foe?

Throughout the investigation, even though I was well aware of what was happening, AI's authoritativeness was seductive. Occasionally I would consult a cited source; mostly I went with the summary.

Characteristic of Gemini's answers was a pronounced tendency to finish up with a nudge to buy whatever it was I'd been asking about. Would you like me to find that for you? Would you like to know how much that costs and what the shipping charges would be? Would you like to explore other accessories? This was so frequent that it made me wonder about the very first piece of advice that Gemini had given me. It had adamantly declared that it would be unwise to attempt to redeploy my own no-longer-made Thule bars and foot packs. But this thought came to mind long after the water had flowed under the bridge.

Does AI have a strong bias toward buying? Given the massive amount of e-commerce data it trains on, the answer almost certainly is yes.

Gemini's own response, when asked that very question? "Google Gemini AI does not have an intentional or hardcoded bias toward forcing you to buy new products, but it can suffer from a systemic data visibility bias that naturally favors new consumer goods over repair and reuse. Whether Gemini leans toward buying new or adapting an old item depends heavily on how you frame the question."

How can you not like an answer like that?

In the end, did Gemini help more than hurt my roof rack odyssey? To that I say:

Yes
Trust but verify
Never switch off your common sense, and
If this rack, loaded with boats, flies off the car, I fully intend to blame Gemini.