Before You Trust AI, Give It a Referee
AI can give you a polished, confident answer and still be wrong. The question is not just whether the AI sounds intelligent. It is: What checks the work before the answer creates a real consequence? I think of that check as a referee. If an AI reads an invoice, the referee might be the purchase order, the receipt, and the arithmetic. If it answers a policy question, the referee is the current approved policy, not merely a real link to an outdated version. If it runs a website workflow, the referee may simply be the test: click the button, submit the form, and confirm that the result actually happened. The important part is not pretending that the referee is perfect. It is building a process where important outputs can be checked, uncertainty can be escalated, and someone in the business owns the exception. The operating rule is simple: Use AI to do the work faster. Give it a referee before you trust the result.
Episode notes
AI can give you a polished, confident answer and still be wrong. The question is not just whether the AI sounds intelligent. It is: What checks the work before the answer creates a real consequence? I think of that check as a referee. If an AI reads an invoice, the referee might be the purchase order, the receipt, and the arithmetic. If it answers a policy question, the referee is the current approved policy, not merely a real link to an outdated version. If it runs a website workflow, the referee may simply be the test: click the button, submit the form, and confirm that the result actually happened. The important part is not pretending that the referee is perfect. It is building a process where important outputs can be checked, uncertainty can be escalated, and someone in the business owns the exception. The operating rule is simple: Use AI to do the work faster. Give it a referee before you trust the result.