We have a "this doesn't look right" problem.

One of my superpowers is doing Internet searches. I can usually find things in search that others can't. Part of it has to do with my search terms (a topic for another newsletter, maybe), but I think the bigger part of it is my ability to quickly see which items that were returned in the search are irrelevant and which may have value. Too many irrelevant items and I know I need to refine my search.

Relevant is one thing. Then I have to figure out if it's true.

How do you tell if something is true or real? That question is impacting so many areas of our lives on a daily basis. Whether it's the text I got from E-ZPass telling me I had a violation that needed to be addressed (I don't) or a fake image or video that goes viral on social media, we are faced with a daily assault on reality. Or maybe it's the search results I got on my search engine or the response I got from my GenAI prompt.

Trying to figure that out can have something to do with the date of the information (iPhone settings from 2017 aren't very relevant today), the source of the information (a vendor, a trusted news source, a random person), or a certain amount of "this doesn't look right". That's a lot of work. Not everyone does it well.

You need new skills.

In a knowledge abundance world it's less valuable to memorize information. The value now lies in processing new information to see if is valid and has value to you. A search engine like Google does some of that for you.  Google's original model was attempting to calculate how relevant a given web page was for a given search term, then giving it a score which correlated to how relevant and valuable it might be for someone doing a search. Web pages are measured for their authority -- a trust level developed by processing its content, backlinks, and user engagement. If authority is a measure of where and how often a page would show up in a search, it's not surprising people would try to game this for their benefit. I'm not an expert on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but ask anyone who is and they'll tell you how valuable it is to establish authority for their websites and webpages. Or at least, it was.

There was a time when you only paid attention to whatever showed up in your Google search "above the fold", that is, on the first page. You rarely if ever scrolled down past the first set of results. Google was pretty good at getting you what you wanted up front. Soon, results were monetized, so you had to scroll past e-commerce listings and sponsored ads posing as search results to find something that may or may not answer your query.

A little watered down authority.

Now take the world of AI powered search. Instead of getting some links with high authority (old school Google), I get an AI summary that Google (or Perplexity, or any other AI-powered search engine) thinks will give me the answer I'm looking for.

So what happened to authority? What does authority look like in an AI world? That's what we all need to figure out. And I don't think we're quite prepared for it.

Back in 2015, I did a TEDx talk I called "3 Essential Skills To Thrive In The 21st Century."  My  skills were really about how humans can better navigate a digital world. Now throw AI into the mix and it's more complicated for individual consumers, and it's much more complicated for businesses. The video quality is not great, but what I talked about has stood up pretty well over time. The first skill I called vetting -- how to tell if something is true or accurate. Over time I've come to correlate this to another skill, critical thinking.

Critical thinking is important because vetting can be dated. The vetting I did on a brand or a service provider 5 years ago is probably not very accurate anymore. Critical thinking helps me with the "this doesn't look right" problem.

The problem got me to thinking a lot about how Industrial Age education doesn't serve us well anymore. The idea of memorizing and regurgitating facts has less value in the Information Age. When my kids were in grade school I remember a typical assignment was to read some pages in a text book, then answer the questions at the end of the chapter. Pretty much the same as when I was in grade school, over three decades earlier. There were some assumptions made in that process. Someone or some entity had vetted the material for use in that textbook. And someone in their school vetted that textbook. And the teacher's role was to make sure students were able to regurgitate the material at the end of the year for standardized exams. It wasn't until at least 6th grade where they were given something to read that they weren't supposed to assume was true.

That's just crazy when you think about how we have to deal with the information we consume today. We have gone from default true until proven false to almost the opposite.

I am a fan of asking good questions. Maybe I need to update my original question. Vetting and authority are a moving target. Instead of how can you tell if something is true I should be asking how can I tell if something is true now?

AI has amazing potential, but a big challenge still remains trust (can you find some statistics that back up how this works). It's like my kids in 5th grade. It can process a lot of information and give you answers. But the processing is not always accurate and also greatly depends on the quality of the sources.

That leaves us with the burden of the "this doesn't look right" problem.

What I’m Listening To

The Colin and Samir Show: Lessons in Creativity from Kevin Hart, Beast Games, and Adam Grant, Feb 19, 2025

I find it valuable to diversify my listening consumption and I'm a recent convert to the Colin and Samir Show. Their focus is on creators and streamers which I'm thinking a lot about lately because of the two young creators in my family, Amanda and Olivia. Adam Grant was a speaker at a recent event they attended. They relate a concept Adam calls brainstorming vs brainwriting. As someone who hates meetings yet often talks about brainstorming, this concept makes a lot of sense to me. Take a listen and let me know what you think.

Berkson’s Bits:

Like radioactive decay, leads and referrals have a half-life.

Common wisdom says to follow up within 24-48 hours. With each passing day, the value of the opportunity may not change, but the likelihood of an interaction decreases.

Don't wait. Follow-up and engage now.

Looking forward to continuing the conversation...

Alan