"We looked you up on AI"

and it was all wrong."

There were two indignant young people looking at me. I looked at their father and he told me, "Lesson about not relying on an internet search."

He shooed them off to find actual books to read. Then he pulled out his very fancy phone and showed me the search they had done. If it was not so serious it might have been rather funny.

The children know me. They knew the answers to the questions they were trying to ask. I say "trying" to ask because they were asking their questions in a very straightforward way. They were doing what an adult who has no knowledge whatsoever of a topic might do. 

The first difficulty, that my name on the internet is slightly different from the one they know me by was explained to them by their father. He encouraged them to use that one so they would get some results.  He felt that was reasonable but, from there, he encouraged them to ask the questions. 

The two children found how they asked a question mattered as much as what they asked.  They discovered they needed to have some information before they started. They discovered what that information was could influence the answers they were getting. Staying on track and getting back on track when a question did not give them answer frustrated them.  Going down rabbit holes of other information was something that did not work for them. Their father moved them away from those. 

They were eventually left with some information about me they know is right. The older of the two has new ideas about how questions need to be asked. Both of them still have a long way to go before they can do a search which might lead to answers about anything. It was a lesson which will almost certainly stay with them. 

Their father and I had a quiet laugh. Apparently this blog is written from the perspective of a cat. It is not of course but we both think it might be simpler if it really was written by a cat.