AI Use This Week - Use Before Search To Save Time Is the Lesson I Learned

It has taken me a while to get going with the whole generative AI craze. Although it seems as though things have died down and the world realized ChatGPT is not going to take over the world and humanity is not doomed to extinction because of AI overlord. If we go the way of the dodo birds, it will because we did it to ourselves.

So, AI is very useful. There are obvious inherent dangers and pitfalls but for a vast major of its potential uses, generative AI is actually great at what it does. Granted, most of what I use it for is feels rather superficial but it is a great time saver. I had asked ChatGPT for a workflow on writing a novel. But before I get into the result that I got, let's go through the results that I would have gotten from just search.

I have used DuckDuckGo, Google, and even Bing whenever I need to find information. Input something like "workflow for writing a novel", and you get the very helpful search results. In fact, tons of useful information. The top searches from DuckDuckGo and Bing took me an article that seems pretty good until I realized I had to sign in before I can read the rest. Subsequent results are fine. Google gave me a search on creating workflows as its first result.

I spent some time digging in and doing a quick read on which articles offer the best of what I was looking for and what the main points are. I took notes.

With ChatGPT, it offered me a quick outline and pointers. It hit all of the main points that I took down. I did not have to read through three to five articles to get that. I realized that with some subjects or searches, I can go to a generative AI like ChatGPT to quickly get some main points and even use it to elaborate on them if I needed it to or I can do more research through search engines as well.

It would have saved me a lot of time if I had asked the AI in the first place. It gave me a starting point. And that I think that is going to the main use for generative AI - helping users parse through the most difficult part of any research or project with the main points and allow users to get started easier and more quickly.