What AI Is Good At And Where It Fools You

You hear two kinds of things about AI. One side says everything is about to change, the other says it is just noise.

I use it every day. Let me tell you what I have actually seen.

Where it really works

Repetitive work. The things you do the same way every week. This is where the most time gets saved.

Getting started. Staring at a blank page is the hardest part. Get a rough draft out of it, then fix the draft. Fixing is easier than starting.

Things you do not know. When something does not make sense to me I just ask. That used to take hours.

A one person business. If you work alone, it gives you the kind of backup that only people with a team used to have.

Where it fools you

It says wrong things with confidence. This is the biggest risk. It gets things wrong so convincingly that you never think to doubt it. If you do not know the subject you cannot catch it.

You stop learning the work. Somebody who gets everything done by it learns nothing himself. And the day something breaks, he is stuck.

Everybody starts sounding the same. If we all get our writing from the same place, all our writing looks the same. Then what is left that is yours?

Client data. Before you paste a client's private information, phone numbers, or internal business details into any tool, think about where that is going.

It says wrong things with confidence. That is exactly why you still need to know the work, otherwise you cannot catch the mistake.

What I do myself

I have three rules for myself.

One: I do not use it for anything I cannot check myself. If I do not know the subject, I am not using the answer.

Two: Anything that goes to a client, I read. All of it.

Three: No private information goes in.

One question

Is using AI dishonest?
I do not think so, as long as you own the result. Using a calculator is not dishonest, but if the answer comes out wrong the calculator does not take the blame. Same here. Whatever you handed the client, you are answerable for it.

One last thing

It is a tool. A good one.

But a tool only works in the hands of someone who knows the job. That's it.