28 P a ul F u o c o
B C B U S I N E S S . C A
J U N E 2 0 24
IF 2023 was the year artificial intelligence
stepped out of the pages of science fiction
and became a going concern, then 2024 is
the year we turn to the latest bot, engine or
app and ask, "What have you done for me
lately?" In short: we're ready to put these
AI offerings to work.
One of the most pervasive (if least
flashy) ways that AI will work for us is in
the form of so-called "answer engines."
Search engines dump a list of links on our
screen and tell us to scour them ourselves,
but answer engines like San Francisco-
based platform Perplexity provide conver-
sational summations—easy shortcuts to the
information we want. It's as though every
query leads to an executive summary. The
ease that answer engines provide is addic-
tive and, at work, these new tools promise
massive productivity gains.
Neel Singh, a Vancouver-based stra-
tegic advisor with a specialty in AI, notes
that generative AI tools are "great compres-
sors of time" that allow us to output work
faster. Fact-finding speeds up, comprehen-
sion can be capsulized and, by extension,
"activities like writing, trend analysis and
competitive research all become easier."
Singh compares this moment to the advent
of the calculator: "Doing long division
on paper is an ancient and unproductive
practice today." That said: calculators do
not hallucinate their answers, whereas AI
tools like Perplexity are only on point most
of the time. Users must bring a journalistic
skepticism to the table, including an aware-
ness of source material (which Perplexity
supplies in a list of citations). Instantaneous
"answers" might be cribbed from a peer-
reviewed academic journal, or they might
derive from some guy's LinkedIn blog.
Very soon, Singh predicts, the ability
to intelligently use generative AI tools
"It's not hard to imagine
that, during an interview,
candidates will be asked
how AI is integrated
with their workflow
and productivity."
–Neel Singh,
advisor on AI strategy
The
Answer
Engine at
Work
As AI supercharges the workplace,
it's reimagining the search engine
by MICHAEL HARRIS
