Reaching for AI makes things worse when the effort was the point, when you cannot check what it gives you, or when a mistake lands on you or someone who trusted you.
- Keep the effort that is the task. Learning, thinking a problem through, and messages like a condolence or an apology lose their value when a tool does them.
- Avoid it where you cannot verify. Fluent output says nothing about accuracy, so unchecked facts and figures become your risk.
- Prepare with it; do not decide with it. On health, money or legal questions, use it to understand and to ask better questions, not to make the call.
- Keep confidential material out. Once it has been shared, it cannot be taken back.
- For anything else, ask two questions. Is the effort you are skipping incidental, or is it the task? And if this turns out wrong, who pays?
Nine cases
When the difficulty is the point
Learning something. Thinking a problem through for the first time. Writing to find out what you actually believe.
When the message's value is that a person wrote it
Condolence. Apology. Thanks that means something. Telling someone you love them.
When you cannot verify it but will be blamed for it
Any output containing facts, figures, citations or legal specifics that you lack the knowledge or time to check.
For decisions about your health, money or legal position
Understanding terminology, preparing better questions, making sense of a letter — genuinely useful. Deciding — no.
When the input cannot leave the room
Confidential material, other people's personal data, credentials, anything privileged.
When you are avoiding a conversation
Drafting a difficult message to a colleague, partner or family member so you do not have to sit with the discomfort of composing it.
When the task is small enough that checking costs more
A two-line email. A three-item list. Something you could write in the time it takes to describe it properly.
When you need to know something is true, not that it sounds true
Anything where you would want a source. Anything you intend to repeat as fact. Anything recent.
When it is replacing a person you should be talking to
Not for drafting or thinking aloud — for the ongoing conversations that used to be with friends, colleagues or a professional.
Formatting a document is incidental. Structuring an argument for the first time is how you learn to structure arguments. Skip the first freely; skip the second and you are trading a skill for a deadline.
If the answer is you, or someone who trusted you, the verification is not optional and the time it takes is part of the cost of using the tool at all.
Not an argument against using AI. This site is built with it and says so on every relevant page, and most of the cases above have a version where the tool helps — preparing for the doctor, drafting the structure, thinking aloud. The distinction throughout is between handing over the labour, which is usually fine, and handing over the part that made it yours, which is where the cost lands.
Hand over the labour and keep the part that makes the work yours. Before relying on an output, ask who pays if it is wrong, and count the checking as part of the cost.
Almost nobody writes this page, because the people who understand these tools best are usually selling them or building with them. The honest position from inside daily use: they are extraordinarily good at producing plausible output and indifferent to whether it is right, and they are frictionless in exactly the places where friction was doing something for you. Knowing which places those are is most of the skill.