AI Street Smarts · 9–10 of 10
The Sharpest Tool in the Shed
That’s your result: 9 out of 10. One of 4 results from a 3-minute quiz. Take it and see what you score.
Full marks or near it. You have AI street smarts most consultants would charge for, and we both know at least one of your mates needs to sit this quiz immediately. The honest question for you isn’t what you know, it’s what you’re doing with it: knowledge this good, pointed at the right problem in your business, is where things get genuinely interesting.
The bands
The here’s-why
Your ten, question by question
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Question 1 Right Not quite
A client emails you their situation, full name, health details, the lot. You want AI’s help drafting a reply. What do you paste in?
The whole email. It’s just between me and the robot.
The situation, with the name and personal details stripped out.
Nothing. AI can never be trusted with anything.
The email, but I add “please keep this confidential” at the top.
Strip the identifying details, keep the situation. The AI doesn’t need to know it’s Sharon from Tauranga to help you write a good reply. And no, typing “please keep this confidential” does nothing. That’s like whispering your PIN.
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Question 2 Right Not quite
Your AI confidently tells you a “fact”, complete with a very official-sounding source. What do you know for sure?
It’s true. It cited a source.
It’s probably true. AI is right most of the time.
Nothing yet. AI can invent facts and sources that look completely real.
It’s false. AI always makes things up.
This is called hallucination, and the dangerous part is how confident it sounds. AI doesn’t know when it’s wrong. If you’re going to repeat it, publish it, or bill based on it, check it first.
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Question 3 Right Not quite
What is a “prompt”, actually?
The instructions you give the AI.
A type of AI model.
The button that makes it go faster.
Something only technical people need to worry about.
It’s just what you say to it. The whole “prompt engineering” mystique boils down to this: clearer instructions get better results, same as with people. If you can brief a contractor, you can prompt an AI.
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Question 4 Right Not quite
A free AI tool and a paid one do roughly the same thing. What’s the free one usually costing you?
Nothing. Free is free.
Quality. Free tools are always worse.
Often, your data. Free tools are more likely to use what you type to train their models.
Time. Free tools are slower.
Not always, but often, and it’s worth knowing before you paste anything that matters. The setting is usually buried but it exists. If a tool is free and you can’t work out what they sell, there’s a decent chance it’s you.
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Question 5 Right Not quite
AI drafts an email to your biggest client. Before you hit send, the non-negotiable step is:
Run it through a second AI to double-check the first one.
Read every word yourself. You’re the one signing it.
Add an emoji so it feels human.
Nothing. It read fine at a glance.
The AI drafts it. You own it. Every word that goes out under your name is yours, including the weird sentence in paragraph two you didn’t quite read. The people who use AI well aren’t the ones who trust it. They’re the ones who check it.
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Question 6 Right Not quite
Which of these is today’s AI genuinely worst at?
Drafting a first version of almost anything.
Summarising a long document.
Knowing what happened in the news this morning, and doing precise maths, reliably.
Adjusting tone, like making an email friendlier.
Drafting, summarising and tone are its home turf. But a standard AI tool has a knowledge cutoff, and unless it’s connected to search it doesn’t know what happened this morning. It can also fumble arithmetic while sounding certain. Words: brilliant. This morning’s facts and your GST return: verify.
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Question 7 Right Not quite
“Your data may be used to improve our models” in the fine print means:
They’ll fix bugs using my feedback.
What I type could become part of what the AI learns from.
Nothing. It’s standard legal wording.
They’ll email me updates.
Your words can end up in the training soup. For your grocery list, who cares. For client information, your pricing, your unreleased ideas: care. Most decent tools let you turn this off. Two minutes in the settings, worth it.
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Question 8 Right Not quite
The smartest first question to ask before bringing AI into your business:
Which AI tool is the best one?
What are my competitors using?
What’s the most annoying, time-eating problem in my business right now?
How do I get on the AI train before it leaves?
Start with the business. The tech comes after. A tool chosen before the problem is a subscription you’ll be cancelling in March. The businesses getting real value from AI didn’t find a magic tool. They found their worst bottleneck and pointed something at it.
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Question 9 Right Not quite
Your mate says “I asked AI and it said...” as the final word in an argument. The correct response is:
Concede. The machine has spoken.
“Which AI, what exactly did you ask it, and did you check it?”
Ask a different AI to settle it.
Flip the table.
AI gives different answers depending on how you ask, and sometimes different answers to the same question twice. It’s a brilliant thinking partner and a terrible oracle. (Flipping the table is understandable. Still no.)
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Question 10 Right Not quite
You’ve found an AI tool you love and you’re about to connect it to your email and files. Before you click “allow access”, you should:
Click it. That’s what the button is for.
Check what it actually gets access to, and whether the company looks like it’ll exist next year.
Never connect anything to anything.
Ask the AI tool if it’s trustworthy.
“Allow access” can mean everything: every email, every file, sometimes the ability to send things as you. Most tools are fine. But you check who you’re giving the keys to before you hand them over, same as you would with a human. And no, asking the AI doesn’t work. It will say yes.
Pass it on
Send someone the quiz
You know at least one person who reckons they’d ace this. Make them prove it.
The next step
However you scored: none of this is technical. It’s judgement, and judgement is learnable. The tools will change next year. These instincts won’t.
These ten questions are the warm-up. The workshops are where the same instincts get pointed at your actual business.
See the workshops