By Natalia Gonzalez Blanco Serrano ’24
Typing full questions into a search function is usually a sign that a person is out of touch, but here at Northwestern that just might be the new normal. The Libraries have recently partnered with two Northwestern alumni in hopes of bringing artificial intelligence — and with it, fully formed sentences in search bars — to library research.
Eric Olson (B.A. in organizational change ’16 and M.S. in predictive analytics ’17) and Christian Salem (B.A. in economics ’16) recently returned to Northwestern to give back as the co-founders of AI start-up Consensus. The two played football together during their tenure here and in June 2021 decided to start their own company.
“Christian and I are both athletes who come from families of scientists, academics, and teachers,” Olson explained. “We both loved and appreciated science, but had no skill to interpret research ourselves, and we wanted there to be a way to quickly learn what the research says about our questions.”
Spurred by the quick spread of misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, Olson and Salem set out to create a search engine that provides people with better evidence-based information. Using artificial intelligence, Consensus combs through high quality, peer-reviewed scientific papers and pulls helpful conclusions from the content of the paper.
Because Consensus learns as one uses it, users are encouraged to use full sentences in their search. This is because Consensus doesn’t use the same keyword search functions that other search engines like Google or Bing use; instead, Consensus makes sense of the sentences it is fed in order to provide more accurate results.
John Blosser, head of library acquisitions, has been working directly with both co-founders to integrate Consensus into the Libraries’ search. As a result, he’s been trying his hand with the new search engine. “Traditional searches bring back the same results time after time,” he said. “With Consensus — since it’s an AI product — it’s learning as it goes along, so the more people search it, the better it gets at bringing back results.”
So, if a user were curious about the effects of fish oil on depression, instead of searching “fish oil depression” like one might type into Google, they would instead search “what are the effects of fish oil on depression.” Then, the algorithm would sift through academic papers on fish oil and depression, and pull conclusive sentences from the body of the paper. Users can then choose results and read the full papers. Northwestern community members can try Consensus here.
A potential Consensus AI search responding to a full-sentence query
Additionally, Consensus rates the results of a search in order to better inform the researcher. Ratings are a function of whether a paper is peer-reviewed, the journal in which it’s published, the amount of times it has been cited, and more.
Olson and Salem both cite their time at Northwestern as formative for leading to where they are today, as well as the creation of Consensus. “[Northwestern football] taught me how to take risks and put myself out there more,” Olson said. “Without that previous experience of doing something that I was scared to do—playing Division I football—I don’t know if I would have had what it takes to be an entrepreneur.”
Beyond the life lessons the co-founders learned on the field and carry with them, Northwestern also provided them with a network of incomparable people. “We wouldn’t have been able to fundraise for Consensus without the connections from the Northwestern football team and the Northwestern student body in general,” Salem said.
Northwestern is fortunate to get a first look at a collections artificial intelligence. “We always knew that if we built a successful version of [Consensus], that there would be an awesome use case for students, and especially undergrads,” Olson said. “It was a no-brainer to want to have Northwestern be one of our first [trial] universities.”
The service is still in its pilot stages, but has been released to Northwestern, UVA, and around 15,000 individual users in order for the AI to be primed and thinking before being released on a greater scale. Northwestern students and faculty will have Consensus at their disposal until July 2023, when the pilot period is over. But just because the pilot period is short, does not mean Olson and Salem’s sights aren’t on the endzone.
“We believe Consensus will be the premium Google for expert opinions,” Olson said. Currently, the search engine is pulling answers exclusively for scientific knowledge; in the future, the two co-founders hope to expand its base of knowledge into every field—news, nonfiction, financial information, and more. Their product attempts to undo the flaws that they see in modern search engines: ads, SEO concerns, and inconclusive answers.
Olson and Salem are grateful to Northwestern for its support in their endeavors. “We really like working with John and the NU libraries: It’s great that the library is interested in this type of stuff,” Salem said.
Since the search engine is available to anyone with a Northwestern email address, as their project gets off the ground more, they hope to see even more users from the Northwestern community using it to their advantage.
Natalia Gonzalez Blanco Serrano is a Medill School of Journalism junior