I’ve got a few days away coming up later this month so I’ve been looking up some travel information online. Since you tend to get fed AI responses and those tools are quite good at digesting useful information from the huge number of potential results, I decided to lean into it.

Tonight’s particular task was identifying some options that aren’t too far from where we are staying and which would work for us if the weather is particularly wet. I started with typing a fairly detailed question into Google rather than two or three keywords, which prompts it to prioritise an LLM generated response. Initially it gave me some information about four places within the 45 minute drive I had indicated. I asked it to give me another four options but allowed it to expand the distance to a 60 minute drive (we will be quite in the wilds). I then asked it to combine all the options and to include some information about pricing.

So far, so good. Where Google’s built in system fell down was after I’d tried to copy the results into an email to Jane and realised that they needed reformatting. It seemed to give up and I suspect I’d reached the limits of what it was willing to give me for free. However, since I’ve got Windows 11 on my main machine, I’ve also got CoPilot. I pasted in the table and my specifications for reformatting and it did a fairly good job – not quite what I asked but a usable result. It also came up with the goods when I asked it to replace all the google.com URLs with URLs that pointed directly to the locations in question.

I decided that was the point at which enough had been done. If I kept playing around, I’d end up spending more time on the prompting than I would have done on manual reformatting! However, that’s plenty of options that I can now do further research on – for example by visiting the URLs of the ones that seem most interesting and confirming opening times, prices and the like. I could also take my shortlist and, for example, ask for other attractions that are nearby, including ones that would work if the sun comes out.

Is it demonstrating true intelligence? No, but it is an enhanced form of searching as long as you know when to stop and remember to check the details before acting on them – in other words, very similar to the “wonders” that we’ve grown used to in our SatNav systems.