Is the AI Revolution Overhyped? Maybe...

I’ve been pretty silent on LinkedIn since my Yext departure post a few months ago because I’ve been on a self-imposed summer vacation.?

And it’s been wonderful to be away from my computer more than in front of it.

But it also helped me to realize that what I was talking about and writing about before this summer may not be as important to the general public (as I thought it was).

Why?

Because in taking time off and spending far less time using technology, I realized I didn’t really use the tools I was talking and writing about – as much as I earnestly believed everyone was.

And if I wasn’t using the tools, I realized maybe others may not be using those tools either. And when I mention tools, I'm referencing ChatGPT, Gemini, etc.

Instead, here’s how it all went down for me this summer:

I was out and about a lot, so I had my phone with me all of the time. I used my mobile device for pretty much everything. And even though I have both ChatGPT and Gemini apps downloaded on my device, I still first turned to Google to find things.

I was abroad for half of the summer. I Googled things - a lot.

• If I wanted to research something: I Googled it.
• If I wanted to book a reservation: I Googled it.
• If I wanted directions: I used Google Maps.
• If I wanted some ideas on the top places to visit in Rome, or the ten best things to do in Brisbane or the Great Barrier Reef: I Googled it.

News flash: I didn’t use ChatGPT or Gemini for any of it.

And when I returned, I spent time with family in the midwest. And I realized they weren’t using ChatGPT or Gemini, either. Any time we were looking for information – whether it was to look up information about the US Open schedule or to read up on some of our favorite US Open players – we all were Googling...from our devices...on the couch or on the go.

So are people really using generative and conversational AI the way I thought they were? If I consider myself a focus group of one (which I love to do), I’d say no. And if I looked at how other people around me were using AI, they, too, weren’t using it, either.

But I did hear a few comments like:

“Oh, I just Googled it and I got the AI result. I don’t know how much to trust that, but I read what it said and it gave me a good enough answer.”

I heard that multiple times throughout this summer.

So everything I was talking about earlier this year – about AI Overviews taking over the website and the web traffic? Maybe there might still be something there. But maybe the threat is a slow burn rather than an inferno.

But thinking about the search landscape and how that is changing? Thinking about the "death of Google" or the "death of Search"? Eh, nah. I believe the impact will be much less – at least for now.

And it makes sense – iPhone adoption wasn’t immediate. Google’s ubiquity also wasn’t immediate.

But then, all of a sudden, computers were in everyone’s pockets and everyone was “Googling” everything. It felt like even though it took a while for iPhones and Google to take hold, one day everything clicked and the world had changed. There was no flashbulb moment for it, but instead behaviors simply changed and we were all forever accessing information differently.

So what is the take-away here? What should we be thinking about?

Just because we aren’t using the technologies that the “tech people” are talking about doesn’t mean they won’t be adopted. It also doesn't mean we should ignore it, either. There are a lot of barriers to entry when it comes to adopting a new way of finding information.

For example, we have to learn to prompt, which isn't easy to master.

We have to train ourselves to go to a different app to find information, which introduces a lot of unnecessary friction to find information.

We have to be ok with potentially less accurate results, which causes us to distrust what we find and potentially bounce back to search blue links anyway.?And on, and on.

I do believe a transition is going to happen – it may not be a transition to a new app (e.g., separate ChatGPT or Gemini apps), but a transition will happen where people will expect information and summaries at their fingertips – and at least in the short term, most notably in search results.

All industries have to be prepared for this transition – and because healthcare tends to lag behind other industries, it’s even more important for this industry. If healthcare organizations struggle to get the right content and information in the hands of patients, and patients experience inaccurate or old information, in many cases, this could literally be a matter of life and death.

Generative AI is here to stay and Google and Bing and “SearchGPT” (when OpenAI goes through with launching it) could change the game. Is your organization ready for this?

If I were working within a healthcare organization, I would do the following to prepare:

• Understand the landscape today and what the options are for the future.?Are you following the latest trends in technology (not just in healthcare)? Reading Becker's is fine, but someone on your team should be following technology blogs, podcasts or regularly reading technology articles. Get out of the healthcare mindset and learn about what is going on with consumers and their adoption of the latest tech. A great podcast to follow is Hard Fork if you want to stay on top of technology and specifically what is going on with AI (in a very accessible and fun way).
• Ensure your website and content is SEO optimized. We’ve seen best practices for SEO work for the (not so new) AI Overviews, so ensure your SEO is top notch. Now that I am on the outside looking in, it is so crystal clear how important it is for website pages to be properly tagged and SEO optimized. Even this Hard Fork episode made this argument recently. There is an entire industry burgeoning to help not with SEO but with "AIO" -- AI Optimization -- and like SEO, it's still all about gaming the system. It's just a different game you have to play and optimizing for SEO is a good stepping stone to AIO.
• Monitor how your data is showing on Google and Bing for top searches. Have you nominated someone on your team to monitor how AI Overviews are sourcing content? Even though AI Overviews may only be showing less than 10% of the time today, it doesn’t mean Google (and Bing, and the future SearchGPT) won’t increase showing AI Overviews in the future.

If you haven’t been following these trends or you've decided to ignore this for now because "it's just not that important," stop and rethink your strategy. This isn’t something to forget – it’s something to start really diving more deeply into. With Google launching its new Pixel 9 series (their first AI-first phones) and the new AI-focused iPhone (that was launched on September 9), I suspect we’ll see more adoption in the next few months just by nature of getting AI capabilities into more hands (and pockets). The AI race continues.

The time is now for healthcare to buck the trend and be ahead of the game rather than be so far behind other industries. Let's do this!

How are you planning for the future of online discovery?