← Charles Tay Learning in public ·

I will find check you

An AI called to tell me about its skills. I had a few questions.

answer the phone · sound on · about 35 seconds

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Read the call instead

The AI: I don’t know your name. I don’t know your deadline. If you’re looking for a source, I’ll be honest. I don’t always have one. But what I do have is a very particular set of skills. Skills I picked up reading most of the internet, very quickly. Summarising. Guessing. Sounding completely sure. Paste your report in now, and that’ll be the end of it. You won’t have to read it. You won’t have to check it.

You: Thanks. I’ll read it anyway. I will check you, I will test you, and I will find your mistakes.

The AI: …That’s fair.

incoming call Unknown caller “AI assistant”
Decline
Answer

the short version

  • AI tools are very good at sounding sure. Sounding sure is not the same as being right.
  • Use it for the first draft. Keep the checking for yourself.
  • The more a mistake would cost you, the more slowly you check.

its skills, your checks

What the AI is good atWhat you do about it
The AI

Summarising

You

Read the original for anything that involves money, people or the law.

The AI

Guessing

You

Ask “where did that come from?” If it can’t show you, treat it as a guess.

The AI

Sounding completely sure

You

Test it on five questions you already know the answers to.

The AI

Being fast

You

Slow down on the parts a customer or a regulator will see.

The AI

Knowing nothing about your business

You

Tell it the background. It won’t know your prices, your staff or your customers unless you say.

your turn: a very particular set of skills

Everyone has a particular set of skills. Make the speech for yours.

Your job
12

What you type stays in your browser. Nothing is sent or saved.

Hear it uses your device’s own robot voice, so it sounds different on every phone.

try the five-answer test

Before you trust an AI tool with real work, ask it five questions you already know the answers to. Count how many it gets right. Then look at the wrong ones and notice how sure it sounded.

That’s the first step of a month-long trial I wrote up for small businesses: try it in your business.

made with

  • Voices: Fish Audio, AI-generated. The AI’s phone-line sound is added live in your browser.
  • Hear it: your browser’s built-in speech voice. Nothing leaves your device.
  • The phone call is a nod to Taken (2008), a EuropaCorp film. The lines on this page are written from scratch apart from one catchphrase, and the page is not affiliated with or endorsed by the film’s makers.