THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AI AND A SEARCH ENGINE: EXPLAINED FOR OLDER ADULTS

Introduction

A lot of people treat AI like it's Google with a nicer interface. It's not, and confusing the two is one of the easiest ways to get yourself into trouble.

Search engines and AI do completely different things - they look similar from the outside (you type a question, you get an answer) but the mechanics and the risks are nothing alike. The confusion isn't helped by the fact that Google now includes AI summaries at the top of many search results, and AI tools increasingly pull in live search results when answering questions.

How search engines work

When you search Google, you're asking it to find web pages that match your query rather than answer the question directly. Google shows you a list of sites that probably contain the answer, ranked by relevance and authority, and then you click through, read the source, and decide whether to trust it.

Search engines index the web by crawling billions of pages, storing information about what's on them, and retrieving relevant results when you ask. If something exists online, Google can probably find it, and if it doesn't exist, Google tells you it found nothing.

The crucial part is that search gives you sources so you can see where the information came from, check when it was published, and evaluate whether the source is credible. You're in control of what you trust.

How AI works

When you ask AI a question, it doesn't search for the answer but instead generates text that looks like an answer based on patterns it learned during training (we covered this in Why AI sounds intelligent but isn't).

Instead of retrieving information or giving you resources, AI predicts what words are likely to come next. Some AI tools now include citations or live search results, but that's a recent add-on rather than the core function, and the base behaviour is still: generate plausible text, no sources, no verification.

The key difference is that if you ask AI something it doesn't know, it won't say "I couldn't find anything" but will just make something up. Confidently, with a smug grin if it could!

Why people confuse them

The confusion is understandable because both involve typing a question into a box and getting an answer. Google now puts AI-generated summaries at the top of many search results, and AI tools increasingly integrate live search results, which blurs the line even further.

But the underlying process is completely different in that search finds things that already exist while AI generates new text based on patterns. Search shows you sources so you can evaluate them yourself whereas AI usually doesn't, which means you're trusting it without verification.

Search fails visibly (if it can't find something, it tells you) while AI fails invisibly by inventing plausible-sounding information. Search makes you do the work of evaluating sources, which feels like effort but keeps you in control, whereas AI hides that work, which feels convenient but transfers all the risk to you.

The blurring line

The line between search and AI is blurring, which makes all of this more confusing. Google now puts AI-generated summaries at the top of some search results; AI tools increasingly pull in live search results when answering questions and some systems are hybrids that search for sources and then use AI to summarise and synthesise them.

This is useful in some ways because you get the verifiability of search combined with the convenience of AI summarisation, but it makes the problem worse in others since people are even less clear about what they're using. They don't know whether they're getting search results that have been verified, AI generation that's been predicted, or some combination of both.

The rule stays the same regardless: If accuracy matters, verify everything. Don't trust AI to be a search engine, don't trust search results that have been processed by AI without checking the underlying sources yourself, and if you're not sure which tool you're using or how it works, assume it's AI and treat everything it tells you as provisional until you've confirmed it elsewhere.

When to use search

Search is the tool you want when you need verifiable facts such as dates, statistics, quotes, citations, anything you might need to check or cite yourself. It's also better for seeing what sources exist on a topic, especially if you're researching something controversial and need multiple perspectives.

Because search engines index fresh content while AI's knowledge is frozen at the point it finished training, search is essential when you need up-to-date information or when you're trying to verify whether something is actually true. (Trust me, I've caught AI confidently giving me wrong information about recent events more times than I can count!)

When to use AI

AI is more useful when you need a summary or explanation of something you already know exists, or when you want a first draft of something (an email, a report, some code) that you'll edit and refine yourself.

It's good for brainstorming when you need ideas rather than facts, or when you want something complex explained in plain English without having to wade through technical documentation. The key is that you need to be happy verifying the output yourself because AI won't do that for you.

When to use both

Some AI tools now pull in live search results and process them for you, which combines the strengths of both approaches. If you're researching something complex, you might want AI to help organise and summarise what you find through search, or you might want a starting point from AI to understand a topic and then use search to verify the details and find proper sources.

Why confusing the two leads to problems

If you treat AI like a search engine, you'll assume it's showing you real information that's been verified somehow, and you'll trust it to tell you the truth. You'll expect sources, and when it gives you an answer without them, you might assume it's because the answer is so well-known it doesn't need citations.

That's not what's happening. AI isn't finding information and showing it to you but rather generating text that sounds like information. Sometimes that text happens to be accurate because the pattern it learned was based on correct information, and sometimes it's completely made up because the AI is just predicting what a plausible answer would look like.

The biggest risk isn't that AI gets things wrong (plenty of tools get things wrong) but that AI gets things wrong while sounding completely confident and authoritative. If Google can't find something, it shows you an empty results page, but if AI can't find something in its training data, it doesn't tell you that but just invents something that sounds right.

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