Last week I walked through how to have your first real conversation with an AI assistant. This week, whether you've tried it or not, there's something worth knowing before you do.
AI assistants are capable, but they have one flaw that catches people off guard: they sound confident even when they're completely wrong. Same calm tone, same authoritative phrasing, whether they're nailing it or making something up entirely. Think of that person at every dinner party who will tell you absolutely anything with total conviction. That's AI on a bad day, and the bad days aren't always obvious.
The technical term is "hallucination," which is a polite way of saying the AI invented something and forgot to mention it.
Two habits make a real difference.
First, treat everything AI tells you as a starting point, not a finished answer. Anything specific — a statistic, a name, a regulation, a date — check it somewhere else before you rely on it. AI gets you most of the way there quickly, but the final verification is still yours to do.
Second, think before you type. Whatever goes into an AI tool enters a system you don't fully control. For personal use, this rarely matters. For business use, especially in industries with privacy obligations, it can matter quite a bit. If you wouldn't write something on a sticky note and pin it to a public bulletin board, it probably shouldn't go into an AI tool you haven't researched.
For everyday tasks, none of this is a big deal. But if you're starting to use AI in your business and you're not sure where the lines are, that's a conversation worth having before something goes sideways.
Next week: Is AI going to take your job? The answer is more interesting than either the panic or the reassurances would suggest.