Keep Your Judgment in the AI Workflow
Updated October 5, 2026
A few words in a work update can shape somebody else's afternoon. A delivery is expected on Thursday. A delivery is confirmed for Thursday. The sentences look similar on a screen, but people may make different plans around them. One leaves a question open. The other sounds settled enough for someone to arrange the next part of the work.
An imagined example helps bring this down to everyday life. A project coordinator has six short updates to read before a meeting. They use an approved AI tool to bring the permitted project information together. Within moments, there is a readable summary. It is shorter than the original notes and much easier to scan between other tasks.
In this example, one detail has shifted. A supplier's expected arrival date has become a confirmed date in the summary. The original note still contains a condition: the delivery time is awaiting a reply. The rewritten sentence has lost that uncertainty. Everything reads smoothly, including the part that now says more than the source supports.
That detail matters to people beyond the meeting. A colleague may be arranging staff to receive the shipment. Someone else may be planning the work that follows. Those plans sit beside school pickups, appointments, and other commitments nobody sees in the project summary. A small change in wording can reach into lives that are absent from the document.
In a more careful version of this imagined scene, the coordinator compares the summary with the original update before the meeting. The date returns to its provisional status. The open question has a person responsible for following it through. The summary remains useful, and the team can see what is known and what still needs an answer.
OpenAI's own guidance acknowledges that ChatGPT can produce incorrect information, including invented references. That is part of the background to a very human responsibility: understanding what another person will rely on. A reference or a confident sentence offers only so much reassurance when the underlying detail has yet to be checked.
In a LinkedIn post about AI and operations, I raised concerns about unclear ownership, late decisions, and fragmented data. The imagined coordinator's problem belongs to that larger picture. A faster summary enters a workplace where people still need to understand their responsibilities, protect information entrusted to them, and make decisions with incomplete knowledge.
My work has taught me to value solving problems and taking responsibility. There is something familiar about those expectations, whatever tools happen to be on the desk. Most of us know what it means to wait for a clear answer. The person waiting for ours deserves our attention even when a machine has helped us put the answer into words.
Further reading
OpenAI on checking ChatGPT answers
