How google’s new ai search can help older adults

Artificial intelligence (AI) is about to change the way most of us search and consume information across the internet. The company synonymous with search wants to lead this shift. You can

begin tooling around with some features immediately. ​“Let Google do the Googling for you” was a refrain the tech giant repeated during its annual developer conference in California’s

Silicon Valley this week. The promise for older adults and consumers of any age is searches that can connect you with the information you’re seeking much faster — and with far fewer steps to

get there. The steps that get knocked out could mean that websites from your local newspaper to AARP will have fewer people visiting their pages because Google will answer many users’

questions before they click through to a site. You’ll see the battle between what’s called content creation and content curation — research, reporting and writing vs. presentation of that

work — play out for years to come. AI SEARCH SUMMARIZES DETAILS, COMPILES A SOLUTION Most notably, Google is expanding a generative AI feature it calls AI Overview, rolling out to users

across the United States with other countries to follow. The feature leans into what Google refers to as multistep reasoning and leverages its Gemini AI model, the company’s answer to AI

rivals such as Microsoft’s Copilot and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. More than a billion people will have access to these AI-generated summaries by year’s end, Google says. But if you don’t want to

wait, head to labs.google.com to try an experimental version. If the AI Overview answers that Google surfaces are spot on — since AIs still tend to hallucinate or make things up, nothing is

guaranteed — who wouldn’t want a streamlined approach that gets to the heart of a search in a blink? On stage during the conference, Google’s head of search, Liz Reid, demonstrated one way

the feature works: Say you’re new to an area and looking for a popular Pilates or yoga studio that offers discounted rates close to your house. Try a query like this: “Find the best yoga or

Pilates studios in Boston, and show me details on their intro offers and walking time from Beacon Hill.” An older adult might add this to the query: “I’m 50 and want to work out with people

mostly my own age.” THE WARNING: YOU MAY HAVE TO SCROLL TO FIND SOURCE MATERIAL Having done the legwork on your behalf, Google delivers a summary with most of the information a person might

want, including prices, introductory promotions, business hours and locations plotted on a map. Yes, Google’s answer will have ads and web links for those who want to investigate further.