#347 – AI-Powered Web Search

#347 — AI-Powered Web Search

AVID Open Access
8 minutes

Keywords

AI-powered search, web search evolution, AI chat bots, media literacy, credibility check, AI summaries, source links, Google AI overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity search, ChatGPT Search, Premium subscribers, AI in education, K-12 classroom, Unpacking Education

Transcript

Paul Beckermann 0:01
Welcome to Tech Talk for Teachers. I’m your host, Paul Beckermann.

Transition Music 0:06
Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? What is in the toolkit? So, what’s in the toolkit? Check it out.

Paul Beckermann 0:16
The topic of today’s episode is AI-Powered Web Search. Searching the internet has become a common experience for most of us. We have a question, and we go to a search engine like Google to find the answer. We type in a few words or a question, click enter, and get a list of websites that some mysterious algorithm suggests will best answer our query. From there, we sift through the titles and summaries before clicking into a source and digging for our answer or desired information. Compared to the days before the internet, this type of access to information seems almost magical. Now, AI chatbots are adding a whole other level of magic to the web search experience. The first AI chatbots gave us answers to our questions and understandable, natural language responses, but they didn’t always give us the source of that information, leaving us to determine for ourselves if the content was accurate or if it was some made up hallucination. While these AI generators are getting much better all the time, I still read the responses I get with a healthy dose of skepticism. As a media specialist and digital learning specialist, I guess it’s second nature for me to question everything and want documentation and proof for the content I’m given. While I still believe these media literacy skills are essential in our information-filled world, the AI and search experience is beginning to change, and it’s making it not only easier to get an answer to our questions, but it’s also becoming easier to check the credibility of those answers.

Now, rather than having to pick between a long list of sources that we’d need to review or only getting an unsourced AI summary, companies are beginning to combine these experiences by developing a combination of AI-powered summaries and a list of online sources. These new tools are beginning to give us the best of both worlds. So how do they work? Well, essentially, these AI tools are searching the internet based on our questions or keywords and finding the most relevant websites using algorithms, much like the search engines we’ve been using for years. What’s different is that the AI can now scan those top results, review the contents of those resources, and then answer your question in conversational language, using the data pulled from those sites. To make the experience even better, those tools now provide links to the original sources used to generate the answer. I love that because it allows me to apply my healthy skepticism and check AI’s answers. I don’t have to use the provided links, but if something in the answer doesn’t seem quite right, I can do a quick fact check. That makes the media specialist in me very happy. In short, this improved experience adds the time-saving feature of a quick answer while still providing a way to fact check and confirm that the answer you are given is accurate. In today’s episode, I’m going to share a few of the top AI search experiences available. I encourage you to pick one and try it out, or perhaps try out more than one, so that you can decide which is the best fit for your needs.

Transition Music 3:29
Let’s count it. Let’s count it. Let’s count it down.

Paul Beckermann 3:32
Number one, Google AI Overviews. I’ll start with this one because Google is still the most used search engine tool out there, by far. If you’re a Google user, you may have noticed that they now integrate AI-generated summaries at the top of many web searches. You get a short answer to your search question with a link underneath it to the source website used to generate that answer. This feature has led to some well-cited accuracy fails. A CNET article shared a few of them, such as this one, which is a response pulled from the satirical website The Onion, rather than a credible source. It stated, “According to geologists at UC Berkeley, you should eat at least one small rock per day.” Now, while that example might seem obvious, sometimes the mistakes or inaccuracies are more subtle. Once again, this is where that healthy dose of skepticism should come into play. Fortunately, with the new format, you can now click the link and review the source for credibility right under that AI summary, you’ll also find that Google does not provide a summary for every response. This is part of its effort to reduce inaccurate or poor summaries.

Number two, Microsoft Copilot. For this option, you can either go to bing.com and click the Copilot symbol next to the search field, or you can go directly to Copilot. Microsoft Copilot is powered by ChatGPT and is connected to the web through the Bing search engine. When you ask Copilot a question, it will give you an answer, much like any other generative AI chatbot. If it’s providing responses that include factual information, current events, or content about complex topics, it will generally provide links to its sources as well, giving superscript numbers that you can click on to access that source. You’ll also find a list of websites at the bottom if you want to expand your search and learn more. So the Microsoft experience is a bit different from Google’s. Rather than producing AI summaries in the core search engine, Microsoft provides multiple source links within the generative AI chatbot response.

Number three, Perplexity. Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine designed specifically to provide both AI-generated summaries, as well as links to the sources. When you conduct a search in Perplexity, it provides a series of sources at the top of the screen. This is like the top website suggestions you’d often get in a typical search engine. When I asked about the 2024 elections, I got sources from the Associated Press, Fox News, CNN, PBS, and CBS News. Below that was an AI-generated answer to my question, including a graph and an answer broken down into short summary sections with informative headings above each. Within each summary were hyperlinked superscript numbers, much like I got with Copilot. Below that, I was offered related search queries to extend my search, as well as the chatbot text field prompting me to ask a follow-up question. The other feature that was a bit unique to Perplexity was the focus option that appears at the bottom of the original search field. By clicking the focus menu, I could select Web, academic, math, writing, video, and social categories to fine tune where the response content would more likely be drawn from. This gives you somewhat of an added level of control over your search.

Number four, ChatGPT Search. The last option I want to mention is the new ChatGPT Search feature. Currently, this one’s only available to Premium subscribers. To use this feature, you click the globe icon in the search box, which signals ChatGPT to search the web for answers. With this enabled, you’ll get a summary response with source information tagged at the end of sections pulled from those sources. For example, when I asked the current events question, I got a four-paragraph response with three citations—one to CBS, one to People, and one to The Sun. There’s also a sources link at the bottom of the summary, and when I click that, it opens a side panel with a list of citations from my summary as well as additional search results, much like a typical Google search. This was a nice feature, as I got both the sources from the summary, as well as additional sources and resources to explore if I wanted to dig in on my own and go further. ChatGPT also offers a Chrome Extension for their search tool, although at this point it appears that that extension simply redirects searches back to this ChatGPT tool. There are other AI-powered search tools out there as well, with more coming online all the time, but these four are among the leaders for this service. If you want to delve into this blend of AI summary and traditional search results, these offer a nice introduction to the experience.

To learn more about today’s topic and explore other free resources, visit AvidOpenAccess.org. Specifically, I encourage you to check out our collection of articles titled “AI in the K-12 Classroom.” And, of course, be sure to join Rena, Winston, and me every Wednesday for our full-length podcast, Unpacking Education, where we are joined by exceptional guests and explore education topics that are important to you. Thanks for listening, take care, and thanks for all you do. You make a difference.