How do I use AI for financial modeling without getting burned?

You have felt it, the confident output that turned out to be wrong, and the sinking feeling that you had relied on it. In this work a bad number is not just an error, it is your credibility. So the wariness you feel now is earned, and it is worth keeping. The fix is not to abandon the tools or to trust them more. It is to change what you use them for. Let AI draft, summarize, and speed up the grind. But treat every figure it produces as unverified until you have traced it yourself. A model you do not understand is a liability no matter how fast it was built. Before you send anything, ask one question of each key output: could I defend this number in a room, from memory? If not, you have not checked enough. That single habit will save you more than any tool will cost you.