Relearning how to Search

Notes on up-leveling my thinking

Rabbit down a rabbit hole - remixed image on Midjourney

With ChatGPT I find myself re-learning how to look for information on the internet. After 20+ years of using web search, I find I have ingrained habits I need to unlearn in a world of AI. In particular, I need to elevate my information-gathering ambitions.

Re-learning to Search is a big deal for me since as a desk-dwelling denizen of the working world, I spend much of my time navigating information online. Putting a question into a search box or browser nav-bar is as natural as drinking water. And yet, I find this is meaningfully changing for the first time in my adult life.

While initial ChatGPT wasn’t good enough to be a Search substitute, as of writing it actually is good enough to fill many (most?) of my information journeys. I thought listing some examples of recent things I’ve “searched” for with ChatGPT could give a good sense for what I mean by this shift.

Some information journey examples

• Local Search: I’m going to a nice restaurant tonight for a celebration. Normally I would Search the restaurant name on Google and poke around for a review… In a ChatGPT world, my approach is much broader. Here is my initial prompt: 

  • “Tell me about the restaurant Rintaro in San Francisco. I’m going tonight and I’d like to be prepared to know what to order and the restaurant’s history, etc. Look online” - I get back a summary of all the top dishes, the history of the restaurant and what it’s known for. 

    

  • I then had various questions from this and kept going: “Can you give me the Japanese kanji for the dishes you mentioned. And then also translate the kanji for me.” (connecting it to learning Japanese)

  • “What’s the history of Izakaya restaurants?” (I realized I didn’t know)

  • “Great. Is there an order in which you should order the food?” (Again, going broader than I could in Search). 

  • At the end of this few minute information journey I have a really good sense for what to expect and some fun things to complement the experience - much more knowledge and much more customized than I would have had with just a review.

• Books - quick overviews: I have a new book I’m considering reading but life is short and I want to know if it’s worth it. Instead of poking around for a review, I go straight into ChatGPT: “tell me about book “X” what is it about?” I get a great summary chapter by chapter. I then see one chapter that seems interesting, dive into it more, ask a few clarifying questions and realize it’s probably not a book I want to read further. This would be so hard to do in traditional Search. Reddit would be more work too since it wouldn’t let me ask back and forth questions…

• Books - a guide: I’m reading Elena Ferrante’s quadrology and sometimes get lost in terms of the characters. I ask ChatGPT, “Who are the characters in Elena Ferrante's third book?” I have my list and I can now ask any questions I want about it or relations between the characters: “tell me more about pasquale's history?” and off I go…

• Show companion / jargon translator: I’m watching a show that is in British English. It has various phrases I don’t understand as an American. I start a new ChatGPT and have it accompany me - instead of searching directly on Google for each word, GPT has context and can be much more succinct:

  • “What does “taking the piss” mean in England. How do you use it?” (great response)

  • “What would “being a Dog” mean if someone from MI5 said it?” (great response)

  • “How about “sister having a mare”? (great response)

  • All of these happen in the same chat and I felt like I had a personal translator next to me…

• Contextualizing news: I see something important in the news but I might be missing context. Now I just ask: 

  • “Mexico just passed a new law and change to the constitution related to the judicial system. Look online and explain it to me”

  • “I saw a headline that says "Germany extends temporary controls to all its land borders" why is that? look online”

  • “How do the French prime minister and president interact? I’m confused what their roles are” (This was super helpful! Especially follow-ups since I was confused how it all worked)

• Up-leveling recipes & Cooking: 

  • “I have a cake recipe for banana bread. But I also want to turn it into banana muffins. How should I adjust the recipe?”

  • “I make pancakes often but want to spice things up. what are good cooking tips?”

• And of course, learning anything…

Main changes to how I’m searching for information

Here are some of the main ways I find my approach shifting:

• Thought-partner, not search engine: The main change I am making is to treat ChatGPT more like a thought partner vs a “search engine.” My questions have typically been much more narrow and lower-funnel instead of the higher-level topic I’m actually interested in. I need to push myself to think of it more expansively.

• Ask broad questions and then narrow: subconsciously I will translate questions I have into “searchese” - i.e., something that Google Search would understand. But with ChatGPTs I can go much broader and divergent - I can connect to other things I know, provide more context, adjust the answers and change how the answers are presented to me.

• Tell ChatGPT to “search online” if timely: In the situations where I need more recent information, I can ask ChatGPT to “look online” for it to search the web and pull the most relevant information.

• Let your curiosity go wild: this is maybe the most important one - think about what could be interesting to know and if you don’t know, ask! (“Tell me something I might not have though to ask about this” <- that actually works!)

• Boss it around - you don’t like something, say so! Explain what you’d like instead

• If you don’t know what you’re looking for, ask (e.g., “what should I focus on? [context]”)

• Get outside your head: ask about other possible ways to look at a topic - “how would other people see this topic? What might I be missing”

• Provide the “thinking hat” you’d like to use: how you want to explore a topic influences the outcome and moves you far beyond the linear path - you can bounce around the embedding space of all known knowledge. E.g., do you want to explore the topic emotionally, rationally, looking for pros/cons, meta-cognition?

• Bounce into lateral thinking through metaphors: Asking GPT to move through metaphors and then go deeper is a great way of exploring the embedding space. I found one prompt I liked where I asked: “let's play a game. I'm going to show you images and I want you to take the image and then create a quick story about it using metaphors from other languages” - in what world would this be possible without this technology?

  

  ---

These of course are early days… For now, I will keep pushing myself. Anytime I have a question I ask myself “what do I really want to know and how could I think more expansively?”

Dream big.