Search engines are a vital part of our lives, so much so that we often take them for granted. And if you are a Gen-Zer or older Millennial, you have had them your entire lives. They replaced the cumbersome card catalogs the rest of us used at the library, and made writing research papers much easier. They also replaced the phone book.
The first search engine was Archie in 1990, a few years before the internet as we know it was unleashed. Back then the web was the domain primarily of research scientists and the military, as well as those who paid for dial-up online services like Prodigy and CompuServe. There wasn’t a whole lot to search back then, so Archie was rather bare bones.
But by the mid-90s, things took off, with search engines like Yahoo, Alta Vista, Lycos, AskJeeves, Excite, and many others. It wasn’t until 1998 that Stanford PhD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin started a research project called BackRub, which ultimately became Google in a Menlo Park California garage.
And the world has not been the same since.
Little did we know then that search engines would one day define how we shop, how we look up odd facts, seek recipes, and pretty much do everything. In fact, “Google” was verbified while most of my students were still in the crib, if not sooner. Recently, Google was vindicated for paying Apple $20 billion each year to be the default search engine on iPhones and iPads. I guess even the courts realize that it’s going to be hard to tame this beast.
I use search engines for everything, including the one on Amazon, which once again defines and informs how I shop, but also on Expedia, which I use as a cursory tool just to see what hotels are available in a specific city. I then go to my apps to actually make the reservation.
But people have become increasingly wary of search engines, because they are smart. They remember. They track and profile us, to the point that Google can use that information to target the ads it sells. And now that AI has been integrated into search results, even more people are worried.
Perhaps you have noticed the AI-generated summaries at the top of a Google results page. It is a succinctly written overview of everything it could find relating to your search query. It even comes with links to sources, making it a tidy little research paper. Well, not enough to turn in for this class or any other, but you get the idea.
And lest you think old DrG doesn’t know AI when he sees it or reads it (remember yesterday’s blog about McDonald’s?), let me just say I that can scroll through the replies to The Daily Blog and pick them out quickly. I can’t stop you from using AI, and if you read down to near the end of the Syllabus you will note my course policy. Just cite it as such, but better yet, use it as inspiration to write your own words.
Once again, I digress.
So why are people worried about AI summaries now? Probably for the same reason they balked at Cracker Barrel changing its logo and store design. They just don’t like change, especially change they cannot control. Stir in a bunch of technology they don’t understand, and fear can set in quickly. The notion of a machine being able to think faster and better than a human can think could push some people far into their discomfort zone.
I get it. Actually, I see it a lot, especially when people refer to it as “that AI crap.” The funny thing is I have heard completely unrelated persons utter that same phrase, as if they had seen it on a Facebook meme. More than anything, it displays their intense uncertainties about yet another tech development, along with their lack of understanding.
I will quickly affirm that these AI summaries are not always going to be 100% accurate. They are a good starting point, though, and they are getting better. I have used AI many times since November 2022 when ChatGPT was released, and have found it to provide some laughable results that were blatantly wrong.
What many people do not realize is that AI in its most basic form has been around for decades, since the 1950s to be exact. More recently, if you have used Siri or Alexa, you have used AI. If you have noticed how prevalent predictive spelling is these days in multiple applications, you have used AI. If you use Grammarly, you use AI.
As for me, I love those AI summaries that Google provides on nearly every query I make. I click the links it provides as a means of fact checking. I take the deeper dive quite often to really dig into whatever Google finds. But more than anything, I simply enjoy not having to sift through dozens of results to form my own summary. Instead, I can just read what Google provides, grateful for the convenience.
I am also pretty certain that in a decade or so, we will look back upon the AI revolution as not having been all that big of a deal after all. We will have figured out how to use and embrace AI for what it is. No, AI is not coming for us. We’re searching for it. And with it.
Dr “Squeeze The Juice Out Of It, Google” Gerlich
