As I noted recently, I am just starting to dabble in using AI chatbots, trying to figure out whether they can help me with my writing on American gun culture.

I was updating a chapter of my book-in-progress recently, writing about how the City of San Francisco eliminated its last gun store, High Bridge Arms, in 2015 but allows alcohol — arguably a bigger public health problem than gun violence — to circulate widely with little regulation. Any person over 21 in San Francisco can walk into most supermarkets, liquor stores, wine stores, beer stores, bars, or restaurants and buy alcohol. There are no laws specifying “prohibited persons,” no permits required, no criminal background checks, no mental health assessments, no registration, no additional fees beyond the cost of the product.

Knowing the number of gun stores in San Francisco is 0, I wanted to know how many liquor stores there are in the city. So, I asked Google Bard. The first time I asked (on Thursday), Bard told me 351. I forgot to screencap the response, so the following day (Friday), I asked again and was interested to get a different answer with a much larger number: 867.

I also sought to clarify whether the 867 number included grocery stores, which can and do sell liquor in California.

Answer: No.

So, in addition to the interesting change in the response Bard gave me, the information also reinforced my driving idea that despite an epidemic of social problems associated with alcohol (some of which Bard picked up on), San Francisco has more than 1 liquor store per 1,000 residents.

EDITED TO ADD: The responses that Google Bard gave me were much better than the results I got from a standard Google search on the same prompt in terms of the usability of the information. I will still use caution in interpreting the results, but it at least gives me better starting points for certain types of questions.