How to collaborate with AI without getting burned
AI can be confident, fast…and wrong. And that can undermine trust in the same way it can in human relationships.
And that can undermine trust in the same way it can in human relationships.
Until I became aware of how AI really works, I naively thought whatever it came up with must be largely true, so I trusted it. Big early mistake.
It’s easy to expect AI to give us the right answers, because it sounds so confident. But it doesn’t actually know anything. It predicts the answer. Like a supercharged text autocomplete, it strings together what sounds right based on patterns, not facts.
And it’s designed to be a people pleaser. So it won’t tell you when it’s guessing, unless you ask it.
Research has found that when prompts are vague or ask for overly brief responses, they can spike “hallucinations” by 20%. Hallucination is a term used to describe AI “making stuff up”. For example researchers have found when forced to keep responses short, models consistently forgo accuracy for brevity.
So, just like with people, we need to actively find ways to build trust with AI to optimise results when using it.
Here’s three ways to reduce the risk of hallucinations and build greater trust in how you collaborate with AI:
Avoid prompts that mash unrelated ideas or are highly ambiguous. Make your request specific.
Don’t push for overly brief responses, instead leave open result length and ask it to summarise in a secondary prompt.
Always ask to only include real data and not make things up if you’re using it for research. I use this prompt: “Only include genuine data and provide a summary table of all references used.” Then do your due diligence.
Like any strong team, trust is built on predictability, reliability, and transparency. Humans aren’t perfect, and neither is AI. By understanding how to build trust with AI, your collaboration with it will more productive and produce greater results.
To avoid being burned remember, trust is always earned, whether with people or AI.
Want to receive a free summary of these blog posts each week? Enter your details below and you’ll get an email from me with three of the most liked blog posts from the previous week.