WHEN NOT TO USE AI

Nine cases where reaching for AI makes the outcome worse, from someone who uses these tools daily.

Nine cases

CASE 01

When the difficulty is the point

Learning something. Thinking a problem through for the first time. Writing to find out what you actually believe.

The effort was not overhead — it was the mechanism. Getting the answer without the struggle leaves you holding a result you cannot extend, defend or repeat.

CASE 02

When the message's value is that a person wrote it

Condolence. Apology. Thanks that means something. Telling someone you love them.

Here the effort is the message. A flawless note that cost nothing delivers less than a clumsy one that cost something — and if it is ever discovered, the discovery costs more than the awkwardness you avoided.

CASE 03

When you cannot verify it but will be blamed for it

Any output containing facts, figures, citations or legal specifics that you lack the knowledge or time to check.

Fluency carries no information about accuracy. If you cannot tell whether it is right, you have not reduced your work — you have converted a known effort into an unknown risk.

CASE 04

For decisions about your health, money or legal position

Understanding terminology, preparing better questions, making sense of a letter — genuinely useful. Deciding — no.

It does not know your circumstances, it will answer confidently either way, and nobody accepts it as responsible. Use it to prepare for the appointment, not instead of the appointment.

CASE 05

When the input cannot leave the room

Confidential material, other people's personal data, credentials, anything privileged.

The only mistake on this page that cannot be edited afterwards. Detail on using AI at work.

CASE 06

When you are avoiding a conversation

Drafting a difficult message to a colleague, partner or family member so you do not have to sit with the discomfort of composing it.

The discomfort is doing work. It is what makes you soften a line, or reconsider whether to send it at all. Removing the friction usually means sending something you would not have sent.

CASE 07

When the task is small enough that checking costs more

A two-line email. A three-item list. Something you could write in the time it takes to describe it properly.

Not a moral point, a practical one: prompting plus reading plus correcting can exceed simply doing it. A surprising amount of AI use is slower than the alternative and feels faster.

CASE 08

When you need to know something is true, not that it sounds true

Anything where you would want a source. Anything you intend to repeat as fact. Anything recent.

These systems summarise what pages say, so they inherit those errors and cannot distinguish a well-sourced page from a well-optimised one. See how to search now.

CASE 09

When it is replacing a person you should be talking to

Not for drafting or thinking aloud — for the ongoing conversations that used to be with friends, colleagues or a professional.

Research finds companion use reduces loneliness in the short term while, over a year, showing increased signals of loneliness and low mood compared with control groups — the proposed mechanism being that effortless availability raises the perceived cost of human relationships. Covered fully on AI companions.

◈ THE TWO QUESTIONS FOR ANYTHING NOT ON THE LIST

1. Is the effort I am skipping incidental to this task, or is it the task?

Formatting a document is incidental. Structuring an argument for the first time is how you learn to structure arguments. Skip the first freely; skip the second and you are trading a skill for a deadline.

2. If this turns out to be wrong, who pays?

If the answer is you, or someone who trusted you, the verification is not optional and the time it takes is part of the cost of using the tool at all.

◈ WHAT THIS PAGE IS NOT

Not an argument against using AI. This site is built with it and says so on every relevant page, and most of the cases above have a version where the tool helps — preparing for the doctor, drafting the structure, thinking aloud. The distinction throughout is between handing over the labour, which is usually fine, and handing over the part that made it yours, which is where the cost lands.

◈ WHERE THIS SITE STANDS

Almost nobody writes this page, because the people who understand these tools best are usually selling them or building with them. The honest position from inside daily use: they are extraordinarily good at producing plausible output and indifferent to whether it is right, and they are frictionless in exactly the places where friction was doing something for you. Knowing which places those are is most of the skill.