You will be able to confirm that what an AI tutor taught you is correct before you rely on it at work.
Before you start your next topic with an AI assistant, name one source you trust on that topic and keep it open beside the chat. It might be a textbook, an official guide or the materials from a recognised course. The assistant explains, asks you questions and sets quizzes. When the assistant and the source disagree, the source settles it.
An AI tutor sounds the same whether it is right or unsure. Simplifications, outdated rules and outright errors come in the same calm, well-structured sentences as correct content. The model generates likely-sounding text, and likely-sounding is not the same as true. AI fundamentals, lesson 6.1, "Why a fluent answer can still be false", explains how this happens.
This hurts learners more than experts. An expert reading a wrong explanation spots it. A learner cannot yet tell. The tutoring methods from lessons 8.1 and 8.2 add to the risk, because practice strengthens whatever you practise, whether it is right or wrong. If you quiz yourself on an error, you lock it in.
The risk is not the same for every topic. General ideas found in thousands of textbooks are usually explained well. The risk is highest on niche and local topics: Singapore-specific rules, recent changes, specialised professional practice, and anything whose details vary by country. In those areas the assistant may mix up versions, borrow a rule from another jurisdiction, or fill a gap with something plausible.
Grace, an invented example, had been learning about balance sheets with an AI assistant for a fortnight. Over lunch she explained the current ratio to a colleague: current assets divided by current liabilities, and the higher the better. The colleague, who is trained in accounting, raised an eyebrow. They explained that a higher ratio is usually safer, but a very high one can mean cash or stock sitting idle that could be put to better use.
Grace went back to her chat. The assistant had said "the higher the better", clearly and confidently, in the session she had found most helpful. The error was small, and she would have repeated it in a meeting with her finance manager.
She asked the finance manager for a source. He pointed her to an introductory accounting textbook used on courses he trusts, which took one conversation. She then checked five things the assistant had taught her against the textbook. Four were right, and the current ratio rule was oversimplified. She corrected her notes and her quiz answers.
A trusted source, also called an anchor source, has a clear author, a reason to be accurate and some form of review. For work topics this is usually a recognised textbook, an official guide from the responsible agency, or the materials of a recognised course. Check a regulation on the regulator's own website. Check a software tool against the vendor's official documentation. For professional skills, use guidance from the relevant professional body.
Choose your source at the start of a topic, before you suspect a problem. Grace only went looking for hers after she had repeated the error to her colleague. The quickest way to find one is to ask someone who knows the field, as she did. If nobody can recommend one, try these places:
The MySkillsFuture portal lists SkillsFuture-eligible courses for many work skills. It is a reasonable place to start, but check who runs a course and what it covers before you treat it as your anchor. Professional bodies publish guidance and run courses, for example the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants (ISCA) for accounting topics. Government agencies publish official guides on the rules they administer. Your own company's training materials and policies are the anchor for anything about how your company does things.
You do not need to check everything the assistant says. Focus on three kinds of statement.
The first is definitions. A slightly wrong definition of a central term passes the error on to everything you build on it, so check each central term against your source.
The second is rules: anything phrased with "always", "never", "must" or "the higher the better". This is where simplification turns into error, as it did with Grace's current ratio.
The third is anything you would repeat to a colleague or client, because it goes into someone else's head under your name. This follows the principle from module 4: the more a statement will be relied on, the more checking it needs.
When you find a difference, paste the source passage into the chat and ask the assistant to explain the difference. You often get a better explanation than the first one, because the conversation is now anchored to an authoritative text. Then correct your notes and your quiz answers.
Choose five things your assistant has taught you on your own topic, and go to your trusted source with them.
Pick five things the assistant taught you on your topic and verify each against a trusted source, noting any it got wrong.
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