Why we're all still checking AI's work

I tweeted something this week about a new survey from Product.ai called the Trust in AI Commerce Report. I got there because I was sitting with a client earlier this week and they asked me whether candidates trust AI answers when they’re doing their research, and that sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole.

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The report just came out this week. The stat I thought was most interesting is that nearly 90% of people who use an AI assistant to research a purchase go on to check that answer somewhere else before they buy.

I think that’s pretty refreshing, and it reinforces an idea I’ve been on for a while: AI is an unpaid intern, and you still have to check its work. I’ve been noodling on it since, and I think it probably says more about where AI search is right now than I gave it credit for.

As I was thinking through the why behind it, I got to thinking about Google. One of the reasons Google became the biggest search engine in the world is that you could type anything in and trust that it would get you the right answer. That trust is Google’s whole business. It’s why advertisers line up to pay Google and nobody else, and it’s why everyone has been fighting over space on Google for a decade. People decided a while ago that Google gives them the most relevant answer, so that’s where they go to run the search.