I tested an AI tool this week with the simplest question I could think of. I asked it how many e’s are in the word seventeen.
It gave me the wrong answer. Then I pushed back, and it gave me a different wrong answer. Then another. It took four attempts before it actually counted the letters and got it right.
This is not a complaint about one bad interaction. It is a pattern worth understanding before you hand these tools any real responsibility in your business.
AI assistants are confident by design. The same fluency that makes them useful for drafting emails, summarizing documents, and generating ideas also makes them dangerous in the wrong context. They do not flag uncertainty the way a careful employee would. They fill gaps with plausible-sounding answers, and they do it without hesitation.
The problem is not that the tools are useless. The problem is that they perform competence well enough to be convincing even when they are wrong. A staff member who guessed wrong three times before looking something up would raise a flag. An AI that does the same thing reads as a momentary glitch.
Businesses adopting AI tools right now are making a bet on the upside without fully accounting for the downside. The upside is real. So is the downside. Every output that touches a client, a contract, a financial record, or a compliance requirement needs a human who knows enough to catch what the tool gets wrong.
The gap between what these tools promise and what they reliably deliver is still wide. That gap is not closing as fast as the marketing suggests. Your job is to stay on the right side of it.
Until next time, keep IT simple.
Dave
CMIT Solutions of Wilmington (Your Technology Team)
Until next time, keep IT simple.
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If you want to go deeper on AI in the workplace:
What is AI safety in the workplace?
10 AI Privacy Concerns Your Business Should Be Aware Of in 2026
