How to tell if an AI answer is true in 30 seconds

AI sounds exactly as confident when it’s wrong as when it’s right. That’s the whole problem. A made-up figure arrives in the same calm, helpful voice as a correct one, so you can’t tell them apart by tone — and tone is what most of us are quietly judging on.

So I stopped judging on tone. Before I act on anything an AI tells me about something that matters, I make it answer two questions first. The whole check takes under a minute. If you want it ready to go, paste this in before you trust its next answer:

That’s the whole thing. Here’s why each half earns its place.

Question one: name the exact thing

This is the one I never skip. Take something ordinary. Say you’ve pasted in your phone contract and asked for a plain summary. Before you read a word of that summary, make the AI tell you what it’s looking at: which provider, which plan, the monthly price printed at the top. “Which provider is this, and what am I paying a month?”

This sounds too obvious to bother with. It isn’t. An AI that’s muddled about which thing you mean will cheerfully answer about a different one and never flag the swap — like a waiter who brings the wrong table’s order and reads it out to you with total confidence. If it says £29 when the page in front of you says £39, stop there. It’s describing someone else’s contract in a very reassuring voice.

Question two: one fact you can check in 30 seconds

I added this half later, once I’d noticed the first question alone wasn’t enough. Now make it hand you something you can verify yourself, fast — one date, one number, one name you can hold against the document. A made-up number gives itself away the second you check it. A right answer about the wrong thing never does: every fact is correct, neatly laid out, and about a contract you’ve never seen in your life.

Fail either, and bin the whole thing

Here’s the rule I’m strictest about with myself. Not the bad line — the lot. If it couldn’t tell you what it was looking at, nothing it said next was about your problem; it was a tidy, confident essay answering a question you never asked. The good-looking paragraphs aren’t a consolation prize. They’re the part that nearly fooled you.

It works the same on anything that matters: a contract summary, a letter from your doctor, a holiday booking, an email from your child’s school. Name the thing. Check one fact. Then decide whether to believe a word of it.

Next: the whole method, in four questions → The whole method, in four questions