Google Search currently adds an AI summary at the top of many searches automatically. It’s called “AI Overview”. I was originally skeptical about its usefulness but after a few experiments it became apparent all it was doing was pulling up a subset of the same links it was going to give me in the search anyway. It seems to me that as long as AI quotes its sources and users check them rather than just blindly accepting them, it makes for a handy shortcut. But then, I always get at least two references for anything that matters and if possible three.

The test is going to be whether, as we continue to use search as we always have, it gets harder to find the correct information, or easier, or stays much the same. There has to be a tipping point beyond which information received through search becomes so unreliable the average user no longer bothers with it but even to imagine such a thing suggests either that people will be willing to give up searching altogether when they hit it or that they will move to an alternative form of search. The former seems very unlikely and I’m not sure what the latter would even be. Can you imagine us all going back to printed directories or books when we want to know the nearest pizza joint or who was the 17th president of the USA? I suspect we’re stuck with AI now, whether we like it or not, unless and until it becomes a liability rather than an asset for the megacorps who are pushing it, at which point it will vanish like summer snow.

That’s generative AIas used in search, though. As for AI being worthless, I think that’s a bit like saying transport is going to be worthless or entertainment. There are a lot of types of AI and some of them don’t need verifiable facts to provide the output the users are looking for. Unfortunately, that applies as much to students and their papers as it does to people using it as a creative tool. So long as the AI can pump out the relevant number of words in coherent sentences and the educational institutions can charge the students to hand it in, I’m not sure either side will be all that interested in whether any of it is “true” or not.