We got burned trusting an AI recommendation. Now what?
You work as a pod now. The spend analysis, the sourcing calls — the AI runs through all of it fast, and fast is useful. But somewhere in your team, someone took its word as final. No second look. No one asked, 'how do we know this is right?' before acting. This is not a story about AI being untrustworthy. You would not hand a new hire full authority on day one. You would check their first ten decisions before trusting the eleventh. You gave the AI authority you had not earned the right to extend, because it was fast and easy. The fix is not to distrust the tool more. It is to build the same discipline you'd use with any junior member of your pod: someone checks the work before it spends real money. Decide now, together, who does that checking — and when.
The AI did not burn you. You burned yourselves by skipping the check you'd never skip with a new analyst. Fix the process, not your faith in the tool. Build a verification step before any recommendation moves money, and assign who owns it. That is the whole remedy.
What changes unlock by starting
- A verification step built into your process, not left to memory.
- Clear ownership of who checks AI recommendations before money moves.
- Fewer surprises, because someone always asks 'how do we know?'
- Trust in the AI that is earned by checking, not assumed because it's convenient.