Fact-Check and Verify: Using AI Safely

1. Getting Started with AI Chat Tools (Foundations) ⏱ 20 minutes min 📊 Beginner

Objective

Understand that AI can make mistakes ('hallucinate') and learn simple habits to verify important information.

1

Discuss as a group: AI is very good at language, but it can be confidently wrong about facts, dates, and numbers.
2

Ask the AI a specific factual question (a statistic, a historical date, or a local business's hours).
3

Ask the AI directly: 'How confident are you in this answer, and how could I verify it?'
4

Use a web search or the tool's built-in web search feature (available in Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini) to confirm the answer.
5

Establish a class rule: never use AI output for anything important (medical, legal, financial, or a resume fact) without verifying it.

Instructor TipShare one real, well-known example of an AI 'hallucination' to make the risk concrete rather than abstract.

TakeawayTrust AI for drafting and brainstorming, but verify anything that matters before you rely on it.