AI Critical Thinking Checklist - Three Checks Before You Trust an AI Answer

Three checks to run before you trust an AI answer, with the prompts to run them and a worksheet.

AI makes things up far less than it used to. The new problem is harder to spot. You ask a question that has many good answers, get back one confident answer that sounds finished, and stop looking.

Phil McKinney asked two AIs the same question about the next big disruptions in consumer electronics. He got two different lists built on two different assumptions, and neither one listed AI agents. This checklist is the method he used to catch it:

• 1 · Cross-Check. Ask a second AI. Read the answers for overlap, split, and what's missing from both.
• 2 · Find the Hidden Assumptions. Theirs and yours. Make the AI answer from the opposite starting point.
• 3 · Separate Evidence From Opinion. Confidence isn't proof. Ask which parts are evidence and which are its judgment.

Then make it argue against your own position, and decide.

Goes with The Innovators Studio episode Mastering Critical Thinking in the Age of AI.  Free and shareable.

Anyone can have the idea. Few make the call.