🗣️ What do you say when AI gets it wrong?

Before we start – I’m cleaning up my subscriber list this week. There’s a short note at the end about it, and what to do if you’d like to stay.

The first time I used ChatGPT for something real, I typed one sentence, read what came back, decided it sounded like a brochure, and closed the tab. I told myself I’d given it a fair shot. I hadn’t. I’d given it about forty seconds and one try, which is roughly how I’d judge a person if I met them once in an elevator.

By the end of this you’ll:

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Here’s what most people do. They open ChatGPT, type one thing, read the answer, and form a permanent opinion. If it’s good, the tool is magic. If it’s mediocre, the tool is useless. Either way they’re judging it on one exchange.

That’s the whole problem, and it isn’t really about AI. It’s like tasting soup before it’s seasoned.

Pew’s research on why people don’t use chatbots lists the usual suspects – not interested, worried about privacy, doubts about accuracy – and alongside them, plainly, not knowing how. That last one is fixable in about ten minutes, and nobody ever sits you down and does it.

If it helps to know you’re not behind: adults under 50 are about twice as likely as people our age to have used ChatGPT at all. Most of your friends haven’t done this either.

There’s a story Procter & Gamble told about itself for a century – a worker left the soap mixer running too long in 1879, whipped air into the batch, and invented soap that floats by mistake. An archivist later found notes suggesting the chemist had done it on purpose all along, so the famous accident may never have happened.

What I like about it either way is what came next. Someone noticed customers kept asking for the floating kind, and made the longer mixing time standard. The mistake is the fun part of the story. The noticing is the part that was never an accident.

What I’m about to show you is three ordinary steps. Nothing clever in them. The whole thing turns on noticing one of them, and then doing it every time.

Last month I got a letter from my insurance company. Four pages, fine print, the kind of thing you put on the counter and walk past for a week.

Here’s exactly what I did.

I didn’t paste the whole letter. I typed out the two paragraphs that mattered and left my name, policy number, and address off. ChatGPT doesn’t need to know who I am to explain what a letter says.

One. I told ChatGPT what I wanted, in plain words. I typed: “I’m going to give you two paragraphs from a letter from my insurance company. Tell me in plain English what it’s actually saying and whether I need to do anything.” Not clever. Just the request, the way I’d say it out loud.

Two. I read what came back and told it what was wrong. It gave me a tidy summary that skipped the only part I cared about – a date. So I said so: “You didn’t mention any deadlines. Is there a date I need to act by?” There was. It was eleven days away.

Three. I asked for what I actually needed. “Write me three sentences I can send back to them.” It did. I changed two words and sent it.

That’s the process. Say what you want, say what’s wrong with the answer, ask again. The second step is the one nearly everybody skips, and it’s the one that does the work.

That leaving-things-off step isn’t fussiness. What you type into ChatGPT is kept, and AARP’s guide is right that you shouldn’t put anything sensitive in there. So leave off your name, address, date of birth, Social Security number, and any account, policy, or card numbers. Anything about your health, too. Type out the part you need explained and nothing else. The explanation is just as good without them.

And check the important parts yourself. It was right about my date. It is not always right about dates. When it doesn’t know something it doesn’t always say so, and a wrong answer arrives in the same calm voice as a right one.

Run it once on something small and you don’t just get that one job done. You get a handle you can use on the next letter, the next form, the next email you don’t want to write.

If you don’t, nothing bad happens. You’ll just keep making the judgment I made – one try, forty seconds, tab closed.

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This is how I support this newsletter.

Find something short and boring this week – a letter, a form, an email you’ve been putting off. Type out the part you need explained, leave your name and numbers off it, and run the three steps. That’s it.

You can’t break it, and a wrong answer costs you nothing as long as you check it.

One more thing, while I have you. I mentioned on Tuesday that I’m cleaning up my list.

If you’d like to keep getting these, hit reply and send me one word. Any word will do. A reply is the only thing that tells me there’s a person at this address rather than a company mail system, and it takes about four seconds.

If you would rather not reply, just click your choice below.

Your esponsse is greatly appreciated..

Talk soon,
Bob

A short story from my desk about the boring little tool that quietly runs this whole operation. No sales in it, just a look behind the curtain.

Not sure where to begin? Take my free two-minute RISE Readiness Quiz and see which simple next step fits you best.

The quiz itself is free. At the end there is an optional $7 starter kit if you would like to go further, and you are welcome to stop at your results.