trust Archives - Steve Sammartino

From Search Engine to Answer Machine

Posted on June 5, 2026June 29, 2026 by Steve Sammartino

The internet used to about searching for information. A place to explore the world’s largest filing cabinet of human knowledge. We’d be presented with options, then we’d analyse it, and decide for ourselves.

Today — we get an answer — a step has been removed, and that step is human judgment.

AI overviews are now the default on Google Search. I guess we should now call it Google Answer. Commercially, they didn’t really have a choice, as search was quickly being replaced with AI engines like ChatGPT and Claude. To be fair, Google has done a tremendous job since their internal code red and pivoted radically towards an AI-driven future — in short, they didn’t do a Kodak. Kudos to them.

The basic entry point of the internet, Google, now has a totally different menu. In order, we now see the following after a search:

AI Summary
A few videos on the topic, via YouTube of course
“People also ask” with more AI summaries
Then some relevant links, largely below the fold

We have moved from options to answers.

The primary result now is an AI Summary — most of which are pretty damn good. How good? Recent research shows it is around 90% good! Which, on the surface, sounds like a very nice number — accurate, reliable. But when you take into account that Google serves over 5 trillion searches a year, that translates into tens of millions of incorrect answers every single hour. For my readers in Australia, the number is around 25 million inaccurate AI summaries a day.

Here’s a thought experiment worth taking: Would you eat food if the ingredients list was accurate 90% of the time, take medicine that did what it said 90% of the time, or drive a car if the brakes worked 90% of the time? I wouldn’t, but for some reason it’s OK for Big Tech companies.

Who do you Trust?

And it is pretty easy to be tricked that the summary is accurate — because the research also shows that the top sources provided with the AI summary, the link you can click to see where the AI summary came from, often do not even support the claim which the AI made. If it says Oxford University was the source, then most people would trust it, because very few people click on the link to check if something is true. I know from writing this blog that hardly anyone clicks on links with research. My blog stats show that around 1% click on research links I provide. (I bet you didn’t click on the one above… all of a sudden I’ll get my highest click-through rate yet!)

The reason is that you trust me — and I’m glad you do. The problem is that we’ve now entered an era where the source is more important than ever. In a world where anything and anyone can be faked, knowing where something came from is vital, and not enough of us are asking that question.

How to Internet?

AI slop is easy to spot. Plausible, erudite, yet incorrect AI summaries are a far more difficult proposition.

It means we and our kids need a new skill base when it comes to using an AI-driven internet. We need judgment and the patience to dig into what we see to test the veracity of what was served up. So while AI has reduced our workload in one area by finding answers or providing information, instead of us having to find it and summarise it, it has also increased the workload in another area. We now have to dig in and see if what it served up was true, and assess the nuance. Not always, but often.

Courier or Curator?

As time passes, we’ll notice a difference in the diligence of people. There’ll be couriers and curators. The couriers will be those who simply deliver what they’ve been given, and to be quite honest, they’ll put their career at risk by doing this. And there’ll be the curators — those that dig deep, cross-reference, and decide what they think based on what and where the information came from. The choice is ours to make, and like always, the easiest path with the least friction will probably be the one that yields the worst results.

Choose wisely.

—

Keep Thinking,

Steve

Why I already trust you

Posted on January 23, 2016 by Steve Sammartino

lost of faces

People often talk about earning someones trust. Which is a bit like saying, I think you’re a jerk until you prove otherwise. My approach is the opposite. I trust you from the outset. The moment we meet you have my trust. Occasionally this means I get burnt. Probably around 5% of the time, it turns out to be a bad policy. Which then gives you a clear indication of why I choose to trust first. Most humans are good, and will honour the trust given to them. Which means that 95% of the time it works out well.

The problem is that most companies make policies to account for the 5% of bad apples. The few that take advantage of things. They punish the majority to account for minority. A better option is to have a business model with the robustness to account for those we who do the wrong thing. By doing this we respect the humanity of our most important customers, the majority. They also happen to be the trustworthy ones.

You should totally read my book – The Great Fragmentation.

The leadership secret no one ever talks about

Posted on June 22, 2015 by Steve Sammartino

And it is this simple maxim:

If you want to be leader of many, then you must first be faithful with few.

One of the most important sentences I learned from the late great Jim Rohn. And it matters in all walks of life and business regardless of our ambitions. The picture above is from an after dinner talk I did recently at a local Rotary Club. One of the things I have done a lot lately is deliver speeches on the technology revolution we are all living through. This is mostly the result of my book. Sometimes I get lucky and get paid to do it at a conference. But often I am also asked by local community groups who are interested in some of my stories. Which is what happened with Essendon North Rotary. It’s events of this size where I first got asked to share a few ideas and learn the craft of public speaking. In the startup community many times I’ve shared some lessons with new entrepreneurs. For more than 10 years I did unpaid speaking with tiny audiences… that is, the few people who had enough faith in me to give me their time so we could both have a valuable exchange. If it wasn’t for this, then I’d never be able to present in larger audiences like this. But on the flip side, we should never forget the few, even if we have the attention of the many.

It raises a few question of how we might behave in a startup:

Do you love the customers you do have? Are you faithful with those who gave you a try before you have any scale? And if you have many followers, do you still take the time to reply to the few who reach out? Do you still support the low profile few who made what you do possible, or just gravitate to the high profile few who you now have access to?

An easy way to test this is to tweet a famous person or brand and see if they respond. If they don’t, then they should be clear they won’t on their profile. I’m not saying every web tool can scale, I’m just saying we should be clear with our audience on what to expect. If you think it isn’t possible, I can tell you that Seth Godin still answers every email himself (he doesn’t tweet). I can also tell you that Cory Doctorow advises in his twitter profile of better ways to reach him. I can also tell you that Skype answers every tweet you send to them.

In the end leadership is about giving thanks and paying homage to the trust you’ve been granted by those prepared to take the journey with you, from the start. But it’s also about not be too ‘big’ to engage with those who helped you get there once you’ve arrived. It’s not easy, but the real job of leaders in the pre and post success era is to bethink both the few, and the many.

Forging ahead

Posted on April 11, 2014 by Steve Sammartino

When we are forging our own path in life and in business, doubt is the key enemy. It’s even bigger than fear. The reason it is a serious enemy is because doubt always happens before fear does. So when we sense self doubt, we need to fight it and forge ahead, or fear might just take hold. We must ensure we don’t stop what we are doing. We need to keep writing, keep coding, keep building, keep creating and just keep doing whatever it is we ought be doing.

Even when we are not sure of the next steps. Even when we can’t see where we are going – we must continue to move ahead. It’s a bit like walking in the fog – the path only reveals itself if we continue walking. If we instead stand still, nothing is revealed

Trade Secrets

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Steve Sammartino

Once upon a time simple forms of industry knowledge were a significant competitive advantage. The little things we knew about our industry from working in it mattered. We had to earn expertise over long periods, and the release of that expertise to prospective customers. We traded in trade secrets. But now those days are coming to a close.

In a market where anyone can know anything about an industry (from the worlds experts) with just a few key strokes, then we need change our view on what creates an advantage. Knowledge of products, prices, places, who does what and who owns what are all knowable. We are quickly approaching a market of perfect information. And when everyone can know everything, and prices quickly level out, the only thing left is trust. And a great way to build trust is by sharing trade secrets. By being generous with our knowledge well before we want to do business with anyone. We need to share what we know so others can navigate the market and reduce their risk.

When it finally comes down to doing business, customers have a much higher probability of trusting those who gave them the most trust first.

How a new brand can gain trust

Posted on February 25, 2014 by Steve Sammartino

This post by Seth Godin got me thinking about how to generate trust when we are a new brand or startup on the block. Here is what I think:

Building trust is simple. Create stories by doing things which exceed expectations. One customer at a time. When we do it, they share their good fortune to have done business with us. Trust never comes from the brand owner, but the interactions with the brand recipients. They then deliver that trust to others who buy the brand off them metaphorically. Thought they’d get X and they got X+1. They tell people about their win. We win by being generous.

Startup blog says: Generosity is the fulcrum of trust.

Trust and my dad

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Steve Sammartino

My dad has an interesting viewpoint on the idea of trust. He says that it doesn’t need to be earned with him rather, he gives it out freely and automatically with anyone that he meets. He says that it is implicit in the human make up. He says that trust should be an automatic ‘gift’ in the human operating system.

Occasionally his trust gets abused – that’s the price he is willing to pay for it does happen. The upside of all the trust given far outweighs the few exceptions.

In startups and business, we’ve tried to de-humanize trust and replace it with forms and legal agreements. I really believe that we should trust ourselves and our gut just a little more. But I’m excited that new technology is making us more human again. The fact that digital footprints are largely permanent may even circumvent the need for mistrust and formal agreements. We can instead go back to trusting peoples word and enjoy the speed that organic development gives us versus making lawyers wealthy.