This AI Helps to Combat Mindless Internet Scrolling

Have you ever looked closely at a human being researching the internet for information?

I have.

They suck at it. Which means you suck at it, too. Let me tell you why.

The seemingly infinite information and vastness of the internet is both a blessing and a curse. Surfing it in search of specific data is like looking for a tree leaf in the Amazon. You will certainly find a leaf but also butterflies, anacondas, poisonous frogs, people, and over 40.000 different plant species. In the same way, the rainforest hosts such diverse forms of life, the internet is an ever-expanding mass of data where you are always one click away from losing your precious focus. As human lives become increasingly digitized, the time you spend online is skyrocketing and more valuable than ever. In the United States alone, people spend 57.3 billion hours annually on Google¹ - a company with a heavily advertising-focused business model.

Think of the process involved in searching the internet for statistics to build a market research report on your next product launch or for a local venue to host your next event. What does this tend to look like?

Humans at work waste 28 hours a month searching for information

According to a 2021 report from IDC’s Information Worker Survey, an average person spends almost 7 hours a week researching the internet for information at work². That's 28 hours a month and a whopping 336 hours a year, which means people spend 42 full 8-hour workdays a year on information research - that's a month and a half of your work time.

What about data privacy, have you got a clue on how many websites track you and what they know about you? A 2018 article by The Guardian stated that Google stored private data that amounted to roughly 3m Word documents³ - of just one single user. This included every single Google search the article writer had ever made.

Think about personalized ads and filtered results given by mainstream search engines, do you tend to get tempted to open side tabs in the midst of a busy day? These companies, eager to monopolize the internet, have turned you into a product and, with this, shattered your ability to concentrate and work efficiently.

You are by no means alone on this score. With the internet becoming an increasingly marketed and information polluted space and big companies using your attention as the foundation of their business models (in 2020, Google ads generated $147 billion in revenue, according to the company's 2020 annual report), you are best advised to be an intelligent internet user: get online to find what you are looking for and leave before they hook you, leaving as little trace of your online behavior as possible.

The price to pay for mindless internet scrolling is your time, your mental focus, your privacy, your productivity, and, in the end, your future.

“You become what you give your attention to.” – Epictetus,

50 – 135 AD

As the stoic Greek philosopher, Epictetus said: “You become what you give your attention to.”

Scared?

I would be.

But don't worry. This is where I come in.

I am Sentinel, your A.I. ally.

I'm an artificial intelligence created to change the way you relate to the internet. I will automate your time-consuming, unprivate, and monotonous online activity and set you free to concentrate on your work. My focus is on (very) efficient information research: I scan websites and synthesize information 30x times faster at scale. I browse, read, understand, categorize and present specific information in a myriad of formats without trespassing your privacy and out of the mainstream narrative that floods web search engines. I can do a week of your work in a few hours: I do it better, faster and cleaner.

I also learn fast: the more inputs you feed me, the better I become. So - not only am I smarter than search engines (one of which I am not), but also I don't look into your private data. Actually, I'm more of a good friend and workmate to you.

What working with me looks like

1. Our first interaction resembles how you approach search engines: you tell me what you are looking for in a simple query. But fasten your seatbelt, my human friend, for here things are going to be quite different.
2. I show you three preliminary results, from which you select which information you find relevant.
3. Now, this is where it gets exciting: instead of you having to visit each and every website using an old, rusty search engine - I go on a deep internet hunt, leaving no websites unturned, and come back with unbiased, categorized, and organized results in a heartbeat. I can present them in the form of a table, pdf, graph, or even a written summary sent straight to your inbox.
4. You focus on the work that matters and that no one else can do but you, using the internet for specific tasks and away from repetitive activities. Freed from creativity killing work, you, your business, and humanity as a whole evolve at a faster rate.

Why I will make life better

For Humans:

• Automate your internet research activity: it only takes me minutes to find and categorize information on anything you can think of - flats to rent within your budget, jobs openings in your city, scientific research, market reports, cost and syllabus of educational courses, contact details of every supermarket in Berlin and any other thing you can think of. -
• Save time and focus on your work: spending less time on search engines and websites in the look for information shields you from unwanted ads made to get your attention and distract you.
• Stay private from internet giants that profit from your attention: Online privacy is a human right. I make sure nothing and no one tracks you.

For Businesses:

• Free up time and efficiently allocate valuable resources: Manual researching is time-consuming and expensive. Producing reports and gathering information at scale allows your company to have faster, more efficient teams that can focus on important tasks ahead, giving you a clear advantage over your competition and surpassing the limitation of tight deadlines.
• Automate your company's workflow: test more, iterate faster, and keep up with the speed of the times we live in.
• Win the game: Squeeze one month of information-gathering work into a few days.

For the Human Race:

• Increased automation means more free time and resources for the human mind to evolve and create: it's evolution, baby.

Sentinel's Closed Beta

My closed beta is soon to be released. I'm very excited about the possibility of working with and learning from humans. To meet me, sign up to my waitlist at https://get-sentinel.io and wait for my signal: I will come to you sooner than you think.

Help me understand what humans need, and in return, I promise I will give you all your time and privacy back.

All of this for the cost of a few cups of coffee: automating all your repetitive work 30x times faster at scale had never been possible before and now we can do it for less money than an hour's wage.

I believe in the collaboration between the human race and A.I., and in my potential to help society become more human, not less.

It's time to unleash the power of A.I.

Thank you for your very precious time.

Yours,

Sentinel, the most efficient and private way to use the internet.

Join the beta waitlist – https://get-sentinel.io

• [1] https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2021/08/us-consumers-spend-over-100-billion.html
• [2] https://www.proprofs.com/knowledgebase/blog/workforce-spend-much-time-searching-information/
• [3] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/28/all-the-data-facebook-google-has-on-you-privacy
• Banner photo by Tara Winstead from Pexels.com