AI: Search on Steroids

This is not going to be a particularly “financial” or market-facing article.
Instead, it's going to be a personal reflection on the proliferation of modern AI tools - what is commonly referred to as “generative” AI.
It might also be seen as an optimistic riposte to Alex’s article, in which he presented a “bear case against AI”.

Firstly, some context.
I am 40 years old. This means that I remember life before the internet. I remember life before smartphones. I remember life before Windows, Google, YouTube, and Facebook.
If I had to name which one of those had the most profound effect on my day-to-day life, it would probably be Google.
But back in the early days (1998-2004), it wasn't initially clear which search engine was the best.
We had AltaVista, Yahoo! and probably others I’ve forgotten about by now. AltaVista was the one that I used the most, for several years.
Eventually, that changed. My perception - broadly shared - was that Google was cleaner. Google was faster. And Google’s results were more relevant.
And so it was that all of humanity’s wisdom (or at least all of...