--- title: "Check what it tells you" url: https://aiguideson.com/courses/ai-for-beginners-start-here/check-what-it-tells-you/ course: "AI for beginners: start here" lesson: "4 of 5" minutes: 9 published: 2026-10-03 updated: 2026-10-03 author: "Jack Stovell" publisher: "Adapt Progress Evolve Limited" language: "en-GB" --- # Check what it tells you Lesson 4 of 5 in [AI for beginners: start here](https://aiguideson.com/courses/ai-for-beginners-start-here/) · 9 minutes AI chat tools can be wrong and still sound sure. In this lesson you’ll ask a question with an answer you can check, compare the reply with the official source, and learn the warning signs that tell you to check harder. ## You need - Your account from lesson 2 (or ChatGPT without one) - About ten minutes A narrated walkthrough of this lesson is coming. The steps below cover everything in it. ## Steps ### Step 1: Ask something you can check Ask a factual question that has one right answer and an official source. We asked for the bank holidays in England and Wales in 2027. Copy ours, or ask about something you know well. The prompt (works in ChatGPT, Claude or any AI chat tool): ```text What are the bank holidays in England and Wales in 2027? List each one with its date. ``` - It has one right answer, published by the government, so you can check every line. - 2027 dates include two holidays that move because Christmas falls on a weekend, which is easy to get wrong. (Screenshot to come.) Checkpoint: You’ve got a reply with dates or facts in it. ### Step 2: Go to the source that owns the answer Don’t check an AI answer with another AI answer. That’s just marking its own homework. Go to whoever publishes the real thing. For bank holidays that’s the GOV.UK bank holidays page. For a train time it’s the rail company, and for a shop’s hours it’s the shop. ![The GOV.UK bank holidays page showing the 2027 table for England and Wales: 1 January, 26 March, 29 March, 3 May, 31 May, 30 August, and Christmas Day and Boxing Day moved to Monday 27 and Tuesday 28 December as substitute days.](https://aiguideson.com/courses/ai-for-beginners-start-here/l4-govuk-2027.png) (screenshot captured 3 October 2026) 1. Good Friday: 26 March 2027 2. Christmas Day moves to Monday 27 December 3. Boxing Day moves to Tuesday 28 December Checkpoint: You’ve opened the official source. ### Step 3: Compare it line by line Put the two side by side and check every line, not just the first few. Ours matched GOV.UK on all eight dates, including the two moved Christmas holidays. It also said it had worked the dates out from the usual rules rather than an official list, and told us to check GOV.UK. Being right this time doesn’t mean it’ll be right next time. (Screenshot to come.) Checkpoint: You’ve checked every line and marked any that don’t match. ### Step 4: Be extra careful with quotes, sources and links OpenAI says its tool can make up quotes, studies and references to sources that don’t exist. Anthropic says Claude can give links that don’t work. Open every link it gives you. If a quote or a study matters, find the original. (Screenshot to come.) Checkpoint: You open links and look up quotes before you trust them. ### Step 5: Let it say "I don’t know" AI tools tend to give an answer even when they’re unsure. Anthropic’s advice is to give Claude permission to admit it doesn’t know. So add a line like "If you’re not sure, say so rather than guessing" to questions where accuracy matters. (Screenshot to come.) Checkpoint: You know one line you can add to make guessing less likely. ### Step 6: Health, money and legal questions Use AI to understand words you don’t know, or to plan the questions you want to ask. Then check the answer with an official source or a professional before you act on it. Anthropic says to look carefully at any high-stakes advice from Claude. Sounding sure isn’t the same as being right. (Screenshot to come.) Checkpoint: You know where AI fits, and where it doesn’t, for important decisions. ## Common problems ### The AI and the official source disagree Go with the official source. You can tell the AI it was wrong, but don’t rely on its corrected answer either: check that too. ### You can’t find an official source Then treat the AI answer as a guess. Ask it where the information comes from, and open those sources yourself. ### It searched the web and gave sources Good, but still open them. Anthropic says the original pages may have context its summary left out. Step 2 is the public GOV.UK page, captured by tools/capture/ai-for-beginners-start-here.mjs. Step 1 happens in a signed-in chat, so it has no screenshot yet; our prompt and the reply are in outputs/. Our reply came from Claude through the Claude Code CLI with its tools (including web search) turned off. ## Sources - [GOV.UK: UK bank holidays](https://www.gov.uk/bank-holidays) (checked 2026-10-03) - [OpenAI Help Center: Does ChatGPT tell the truth?](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8313428-does-chatgpt-tell-the-truth) (checked 2026-10-03) - [Claude Help Center: Claude is producing links that don’t work and falsely claiming it has sent emails](https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8241188-claude-is-producing-links-that-don-t-work-and-falsely-claiming-that-it-has-sent-emails-or-produced-external-documents-what-s-going-on) (checked 2026-10-03) - [Claude Platform Docs: Reduce hallucinations](https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/test-and-evaluate/strengthen-guardrails/reduce-hallucinations) (checked 2026-10-03) - [Claude Help Center: Claude is providing incorrect or misleading responses](https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8525154-claude-is-providing-incorrect-or-misleading-responses-what-s-going-on) (checked 2026-10-03)