Why Your AI Keeps Giving You Bad Answers

Dennis Collins: AI can help with a lot of things, right? So today we’re gonna be honest about where you are. The question isn’t getting any softer. It’s getting louder. What the heck am I supposed to do with this AI? Okay? And we’ve had several episodes on Connect and Convert about AI. Hope you’ll listen to all of them because we try to give you at least one piece of advice, one piece of action that you can take immediately to deal with this whole AI thing. Lest you think this is just another podcast on AI, which there are hundreds of thousands, this is special because we have the author of the Secret Formulas of Artificial Intelligence. Yes, he is right here. Paul Boomer. See, his name’s right there, Paul M. Boomer.

Leah Bumphrey: You can tell he’s not AI ’cause there, he has the right amount of fingers there.

Dennis Collins: Well, he might be AI. We’re not sure, of course.

Leah Bumphrey: Hey, this is what I look for. I look for this in videos. How many hands? Fingers. Yeah. Rings. Okay. We’re good. 

Dennis Collins: Leah, you really… You really don’t do that, do you?

Leah Bumphrey: I do…

Dennis Collins: That’s a little creepy.

Leah Bumphrey: Oh, well. I make sure. Thank you.

Dennis Collins: So in today’s episode, here’s what we want to accomplish today. We want to give our audience… If they’re only going to do one thing, what is the one thing they should do with AI? ‘Cause as we’ve talked on our other episodes about this, there’s a lot of things you can do with AI and you probably already figured that out. You probably have subscribed to ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity or all three. And you’re saying, “Yeah, I’m in. I’m in. I’m in AI. I’m doing AI.” Are you? Okay. So we turn always to Paul Boomer, our subject matter expert. What is that one thing, Paul? If you’re only going to do one thing, what is the one thing you should do regarding AI in your small business?

Paul Boomer: That is a really tough question to answer.

Dennis Collins: Well, but that’s why I ask you. You’re the man.

Paul Boomer: Okay. So I’m going to treat you as if you were a client of mine.

Dennis Collins: Okay.

Paul Boomer: And I would ask, what do you think you should be doing? Where have you… If you are using it today, where have you used it and why have you used it and what have you gotten out of it? What’s been the most impactful for you?

Dennis Collins: Okay. I think most people would say, “Yeah, well, we’ve used it to write content for our website. We’ve found a way to get it to respond to emails.” Yeah, maybe one or two other things, but that’s about it. I don’t know what else it can do. I have no idea.

Paul Boomer: And I’d be asking, “Okay, and how are you measuring the output of that? Is it helping you? Is it hurting you? Are you measuring it?”

Dennis Collins: I was going to ask you that question.

Paul Boomer: Okay.

Dennis Collins: So I’m in…

Paul Boomer: We’ve got to figure out how to measure this thing for you. Because you can’t just use AI and say, “Oh, it’s helping.” No, Is it actually helping? Is it increasing productivity? Is it actually increasing culture or is it decreasing culture at the cost of money? There’s so many aspects that go into this. So…

Leah Bumphrey: People do stuff just because they think they should and, “I gotta try this. I gotta…” No, no, no, no, no. The most important questions: what do you want and what do you need? And then being able to measure it. So what do you want? I want more time. I want to make more money. I want… Okay, and then the how. And you keep, it’s the five whys. Why, why, why, why, why? When you keep asking that, you will come to terms with how it can help you. And if it’s not helping you, then you’re using it wrong or you’re using it for the wrong things. It can’t help me wash my floors. I know AI can’t do that. Eventually it will.

Dennis Collins: I imagine those little robots that wash floors will be all over the place, right? But let me tag on that. Paul asked a great question. How do I know if it’s actually working or if I’m just throwing money to defend myself, as Leah said, “Well, I’ve got to do this. I’m defending myself.” But I don’t know if this is actually working. Most small business owners that I’ve talked to say this: “Yeah, I would be more ready to adopt AI if I saw some type of ROI.” What do you say to those people, Boomer?

Paul Boomer: AI is your intern. If you hire an intern, are you gonna see immediate ROI in that? No.

Dennis Collins: Probably not.

Paul Boomer: You’re gonna see a reverse of that, actually, because it’s going to take a little time to get them up to speed. Once that person, once that intern knows what their tasks specifically are and why and how they’re doing it, that ROI then starts kicking in. So there might be a 3, 6, 12, 18-month lag before you actually know if AI, whatever you’re using it for, is helping. Again, how are you using it determines that.

Dennis Collins: And so you’re saying the metrics would be determined by how you’re using it?

Paul Boomer: Yes, absolutely. Again, is it saving you time? Is it saving you money? Is it increasing money? Or is it decreasing time or increasing time?

Dennis Collins: Okay, you just mentioned a bunch of things. I don’t want to lose that. You just enumerated some things that it can do. Let’s go through that list you just gave us again to make sure we don’t lose that. What can it do? It can save you time, I think you said?

Paul Boomer: It can save you time.

Dennis Collins: Yep.

Paul Boomer: It can save you money.

Dennis Collins: Right.

Paul Boomer: It can increase money, revenue.

Dennis Collins: Productivity, I guess, yeah?

Paul Boomer: Productivity, thank you, yes. And it can… What’s the reverse of saving you time? It can give you time. I mean, it’s saving you time, so that’s kind of the same.

Dennis Collins: So you’re not wasting time. 

Leah Bumphrey: Found time is important.

Paul Boomer: Yeah.

Dennis Collins: You’re not wasting time is what you’re trying to say, right? Or wasting time on things that are not that… That are important.

Paul Boomer: Something else can handle with much more efficiency.

Leah Bumphrey: The one thing that has made a difference for me is making it part of my routine. To ask AI, to access AI when I have something that I need to do that I don’t want to do or I’m not that good at, or I’m unsure. Quick funny story. Last week I drove on prairie highways through a blizzard, ice storm. Unbelievable. Last 20 minutes, it was crazy. Got to my destination. I couldn’t get out of my vehicle. I could not. I’m driving a 2025 Equinox. I can’t get out of my vehicle. My girlfriend’s laughing at me. We’re parked, we’re safe. I’m trying the fob, I’m trying the door, I’m trying the whatever. It’s not opening.

So I go onto Perplexity. “Why is my…” And I give it… ‘Cause I’m thinking it got wet, there’s gotta be a workaround. There’s no little manual little door knobby to pull to open. The windows are opening, so it’s not the whole electrical. I can start it, I can stop it. So I asked and it gave me this whole list of reasons why I will not be able to open it and how to call a locksmith and how to do this and how to… And I was so irritated. So a litany of phone calls later, finally I decide to push the back hatch, the button to… And the hatch opened.

So there I am crawling over, moving aside. The girlfriend I’m with is killing herself ’cause I’m having to move the box of wine we brought. There were a lot of us that were gonna be meeting at this particular hotel. Anyways, I get everything pulled, I get out, I look at the side of my vehicle. This thick, six inches of ice on both sides. So then I went and I slammed against it. The doors were frozen shut. So did Perplexity lie to me? Did Perplexity tell me the wrong thing? I never told her that I had just finished driving through an ice storm.

Dennis Collins: Aha. So it gave you all the answers for normal conditions, not for ice storms.

Leah Bumphrey: And it was wrong and I was mad and I called her many names. And this is me who doesn’t want to personalize AI, but I was really… But how could she know? How could she know? I didn’t give her all the information.

Dennis Collins: So what’s the lesson learned here?

Leah Bumphrey: Well, it was right for me to use her as part of my routine ’cause had I said, “I’ve just driven on highway conditions that were crazy,” I bet you she would’ve known. Right? I didn’t have the right prompts. I didn’t give all the information. But I’m really proud of myself for asking. Right? For asking. ‘Cause I can solve every other electrical problem now.

Dennis Collins: I’m proud of you too, Leah. I didn’t know you were that well-versed in AI. You are quite the champ.

Leah Bumphrey: I just like asking. I like having someone to ask. And AI never makes fun of me. I never have to worry about it going, “Are you, like, really? You didn’t know that if you plug this cord in, this would happen? Really? You didn’t understand that using baking powder instead of baking soda is no good?” AI just tells me what to do. Non-judgment, if I ask the right questions.

Dennis Collins: Leah, great story. That brings me back to this. So you’ve got AI, you’ve played around with ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, whatever, but you don’t know how to ask AI what you want, which is what Leah’s problem was. She did not put the actual solution to her problem in that prompt. Paul Boomer, in your book, you mention a lot of prompts. You and I have shared prompts. You’ve given me some killer prompts over the time. Talk to us about what you put into a chatbot.

Paul Boomer: I’m gonna backtrack just a moment to actually Leah’s story. And I find that fascinating because one thing I’ve noticed is AI is actually causing us as humans to be better communicators.

Dennis Collins: Hmm.

Leah Bumphrey: Interesting. Yeah.

Paul Boomer: I have a background… I went through special education, learning disability, ADHD, a few other things, whatever. So communication is always a little bit of a challenge for me sometimes. As I explain right here and demonstrate. And what AI has forced me to do is to gather my thoughts first and then plug it in, knowing that again… And I keep going back to the reference of intern, thinking of it as an intern. If you don’t give it the full information, it doesn’t know what’s right, what’s left, what’s wrong, what’s up, what’s down, what’s diagonal. It doesn’t know that.

Paul Boomer: So you have to give it the right information for it to come to the conclusion that you are seeking. Because of that, it forces us to think first in a time where we are so time-constricted. And we’re using… What’s interesting is we’re using AI to speed up time almost, to get more things done. But what’s interesting, it’s actually forcing us to slow down. Those who are using it properly, it’s forcing us to rethink how we communicate. So, Dennis, I don’t think I just answered your question, but I just wanted to say that.

Dennis Collins: I think you did, though, actually. I think you did answer it. That if you’re just throwing BS into the chatbot, you’re gonna get BS back. You have to think through what the problem is you’re trying to solve. Like in Leah’s case, had she thought for another 30 seconds, she says, “Oh, it probably has something to do with the ice. Let me put this in Perplexity and see what she says about ice.” So…

Paul Boomer: And here is one tip I recommend for everybody. Whenever you’re putting a prompt in, especially the first prompt when you’re asking questions, ask it or tell it to ask you, to not work in ambiguity, “And what other questions do you have of me to make the right decision?” or to make the right recommendation or whatever.

Leah Bumphrey: I like that. Absolutely.

Paul Boomer: And it will tell you. It will spit back about three questions saying, “Hey, what about this? What about this? Or what about this?” And you go, “Oh, I didn’t think about that.”

Dennis Collins: Yeah. I use that similar way. “What questions have I not asked that I should have asked that would help me learn more about this?”

Paul Boomer: Or, “What information do you need to make a full decision?”

Leah Bumphrey: I also like to ask the question bass-ackwards. Okay. “I want to help my brother, who I like, market his HVAC company. I want to help my brother, who I don’t like, market his…” It is amazing, right? And by getting the opposite view, like you’re obviously in one I’m trying to kill his business, on the other I’m trying to grow it, it helps you get this 3D perspective. But I like your idea, Paul. Ask what I have missed. Because that is a… I love doing that in a sales call when I’m talking to a prospect or to a client is like, “What should I have asked that I didn’t ask? What am I missing? What’s going on?” Gotta get used to asking that as a prompt. “What else do you need to know?”

Dennis Collins: Absolutely. It’s amazing the answers you get back. Stuff that you say to yourself, “I should have thought of that, but I didn’t.”

Leah Bumphrey: Oh, for sure. Well, when I drive down to wizardacademy.org, I’ve never… Not that I’ve driven down, but there would be no ice. But there would be a lot of prompts to make sure I get down there the right way. And we’re thrilled that they sponsor us. But for our small business owners, and we’re getting towards the end of our time here, it’s making it part of your routine so you don’t feel stupid asking AI and a couple of different AIs questions. And that helps you build a way to do it that reflects who you are and what you’re after. Because it does learn.

Dennis Collins: I like what you said, who you are and what you’re after. And it has no way of knowing that until you tell it, right?

Leah Bumphrey: Yep.

Dennis Collins: You have to tell it. And the better you are at telling it, the better responses you’re going to get. Good. Good summary. Mr. Boomer, what do you want to leave our audience with today? One tip, one thing. If they’re going to do nothing else with AI, what is the one thing they need to do with AI?

Paul Boomer: Dive in to AI knowing it’s not perfection and expect crap. Be willing to put in the time to learn how to communicate with it because just by communicating with AI better, you’re gonna become a better communicator overall, which is very, very way out there in terms of business owners. They’re not thinking about that, but it is critical. Communication is critical. And if you can actually, and this is weird, I can’t believe I’m saying this, if you can communicate with AI, you can communicate with people.

Dennis Collins: Ooh.

Leah Bumphrey: I like that. I like that.

Dennis Collins: Interesting. So it’s the same skills as you’re saying, right?

Paul Boomer: Yeah. I’m actually gonna extend that. I’m sorry. If you can communicate with AI in such a way that you get the responses that are fully formulated back from AI, then you can communicate with other people better. I gotta work on that a little bit.

Dennis Collins: Yeah. You got something there, don’t you?

Leah Bumphrey: We’re coming back to it. We’re coming back to that.

Dennis Collins: I think you got something there. So, any final word on what our business owners need to not fear AI? Yes, it is that huge snowball rolling down the hill. You don’t want to get crushed by it. The only way to fix that is to jump on board, okay? And get with it. And I hope this episode, and we’ve had several other episodes of Connect and Convert that talk about AI, so tune those in because we’ve talked about other aspects of it. I think you’ll find that interesting, and I hope you found today’s interesting.

So that wraps it up for another episode of Connect and Convert. We’ll be back soon. Stay tuned to Connect and Convert.