Responsibility for AI output
What it is
An AI app is the app you open and type to, which writes for you. What the app writes is a draft for you to check, change or throw away. Once you send, post, sign or act on a draft, you answer for it: if it is wrong, people come to you, not the app.
Your AI app writes what reads well. It cannot know what is true about your situation. Say you forward its summary of a long email, and the deadline is wrong. Whoever gets the summary acts on that deadline.
A detail only you know is one that depends on your situation, such as a name, date, amount or promise. A draft can hold some details you gave your AI app and some the app filled in to read well. Only you can check a detail, by comparing it with your records: your messages, paperwork and notes.
Tips
- Before your AI app's draft goes out, read it as the person who answers for it, because once it goes out under your name the result is yours.
- Check the details only you know (names, dates, amounts, promises) against your records, because your AI app may add some to read well and cannot know which are true.
- On a choice that matters, decide what you think before asking your AI app, because the first draft you see tends to become your decision, even a wrong one.
Try it
- Ask your AI app to write a message you really have to send this week, such as an email to a customer, a note to a school or a message to a landlord, giving it the facts as you normally would. If you have none, use a message you owe a friend.
- Read the draft from start to end and mark every detail only you know: each name, date, amount and promise.
- For each marked detail, ask yourself whether you gave it to your AI app. Any you did not give, the app filled in.
- Check each detail you did not give against your records, and take out any detail you cannot confirm.
- Send the corrected message, or save it.
If every detail came from you, you still read the draft as the person who answers for it, and you can do that with every message before it goes out.
Risks
- Your AI app can put a wrong detail in a draft. Most apps' terms, the rules you agreed to at sign-up, leave the checking to you, not the company that runs the app. Check each detail against your records first.
- After a few good drafts you may read less closely, because a polished draft looks finished. Make checking the details only you know your last step before sending. Asking your AI app "is this right?" is no check, because a check compares with your records.
- Writing "AI helped" on a draft does not replace checking it, so check the draft's details first. Separately, some courts, professional bodies and employers require you to say AI was used; ask your employer, or whoever you send the draft to, what the rule is.
Why it matters
Your AI app drafts and you decide what goes out. Read each draft as the person who answers for it, and check the details only you know.